Griffin's blog

How was this map created? Explain your process

I began with a map of my neighborhood acquired from satellite images. I then traced all the possible routes from my house to school that would logically be taken. I overlaid the four routes that I take most often highlighting certain stops (attractors) along the way. Using control point curves I retraced the common routes to provide averaged lines--breaking free of the grid and seeing the paths only in relation to one another. I turned the two dimensional lines into three-dimensional tunnels to allow for more calibration. The shape and diameter of the tunnels are based on information about each attractor. The shape of the attractor is defined by its popularity and convenience. The shape of the attractor is blended with the shape of the initial position to create the overall shape of the path. The immediate area around the attractors is more intense and fades as the distance from them increases. The diagrams show perspective sections and elevations, details of the area around attractors, and some global visualization tools for conveying position.

Why have typical city maps failed to embrace the complexity of urbanism?

Diagram 1: Perspective Section: Click to view more

Human beings have always had a desire to map. In their various forms and manifestation, maps have visualized human interaction with the environment. The extremely broad term "mapping" has been applied to a wide gamut of spaces--both actual and virtual. It is a technique that has been used for centuries. Religious maps depicting the heavens, celestial maps of the stars used for navigation, property maps for dividing land, information maps, maps of our bodies including our genome and our brain, and so on. For better or worse maps have been used to define our world. In many cases they have opened up new territories and allowed us to understand and visualize space. Maps have also in many situations over simplified space and created generalized distinction that have come to affect entire races of people (see Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson). Maps have been used for personal exploration, scientific discovery, and political authority but maps are by definition representational and this must be considered. We often take the extremely powerful tool for granted, forgetting that maps are capable of both defining space as well as predicting it.

Particularly in the practice of architecture, mapping has been a highly effective tool. It has been explored and implemented theoretically and practically from the Mayans to the Romans and still today. The challenge for architects however, is this question of representation. How do you depict space that every individual perceives differently? Space can be very different than how it is actually perceived or presented by different media. The architect Shaun Murray is also very invested in the representational range of architecture. He writes, "In a performance the communication from composer (user), to performer (reader) or environment (space) is not at all straightforward. That architecture is reaching front he mental to physical world must pass through a processes of visualization, alienating itself from pure architecture. Notation has made the composition of architecture an activity like the composition of fiction: the activity of communication. So deep is the connection between architecture and communication in our culture that for much of the time we ignore it and behave as if the notation were really just a transparent window. Just as in a drawing we may ignore the intermediacy of notation and image the thoughts are reaching us directly from the architects mind." Architecture has always had the ability to reconcile different levels of reality. It has the ability to relate abstract ideas and conceptual structures to the concrete situations of everyday life.

Architecture constantly works between different modes of representation. The difference between the plan and what is ultimately built, for instance, when it translates a whole city into a diagram or a map. The seemingly simple act of reading a map involves more than just the imagination; it involves the reciprocity between different levels of representation, that may intake discrepancy and lack of information. Architecture is a process of investigation and the map is its prime visualization tool. It is important to explore the boundaries of the various techniques for depicting space, and perhaps begin to broaden our representational range that has long been dominated by modernist instrumentality. In this mapping exercise, I am attempting to represent a personal geography. It is the worldview of one individual. I am trying to understand my environment and its effects on my emotions and behaviors. Furthermore I am applying new techniques and technologies to the traditional mapping process. It is an experimental geography project, so naturally it raises more questions than finds answers to.

With every new residence I have occupied in New York City, my daily walking paths alter. Suddenly I am traveling down different streets, past different storefronts, operating in an entirely new neighborhood. How does this transition affect other aspects of my being--both consciously and unconsciously. Wherever I am living, the journey from home to school is one taken daily. The walk can become tedious, mindless even, as one becomes for familiar with the territory. I try to walk down different streets, in different patterns to make the experience more exciting and become more aware of my surroundings. When we are too comfortable in our environment and are no longer surprised, we lose the ability to fully experience the world.

Of all the possible paths that can be taken, more often than not I will follow one of only a few. Whether it is because certain streets are more vacant, or the ambiance is more appealing, or the smell is less pungent I am attracted to certain routes. This is something that has always fascinated me and that this map seeks to explore.

The Forward Building

In a city like New York where personal space is so limited, it is no wonder that people become inexorably attached to their apartments. Many people have suggested that the real idea of "home" is something that you carry with you. It is not something found in the concrete walls and wooden floors (although Waldie would beg to differ), but rather it is the collection of personal artifacts and later, the memories that you associate with a specific place. Our ability to feel at home is something personal and specific to every individual. It is something found deep inside ourselves and it develops over time based on lived experiences and family history. Indeed there are certain traits that a space can posses to facilitate a warm and comfortable feeling toward it, but at the end of the day it is the individual that makes a space what it is.

Despite the fact that New York always seems to be under construction, it contains vast number of old buildings that each contribute to the city's character. There is a history and a permanence to New York that is undeniable and it is made up of generations of different people from far-reaching places constantly moving in and out of the relatively small island. Storefronts cycle on a regular basis. The hole in the wall that was a restaurant yesterday, becomes and art gallery tomorrow. This is something that Colson Whitehead mentions in his book Colossus of New York, which is an elegant love song to the city. In the opening of the book Whitehead writes, " Go back to your old haunts in your old neighborhoods and what do you find: they remain and have disappeared. The greasy spoon, the deli, the dry cleaner you scouted out when you first arrived and tried to make those new streets yours: they are gone. But look past the windows of the travel agency that replaced your pizza parlor. Beyond the desks and computers and promo posters for tropical adventures, you can still see Neopolitan slices cooling, the pizza cutter lying next to a half pie, the map of Sicily on the wall. It is all still there, I assure you." Every building has its own stories and its own relationship to the city and its occupants. No one can deny that individuals shape the environment, just as much as the environment shapes us.

I have lived in a few different apartments in the past four years since I arrived in NY. Each one has been significantly different in size, locations, and overall appearance. But each one has been meaningful and significant in their own right. Each one has been home. Currently I live in an apartment building called the Forward. The forward use to be home to the Socialist Jewish newspaper of same name. The building was constructed in 1912 at the peak of the daily Yiddish-language newspapers success. According to a New York times article, "A common story is that it was built in reaction to the capitalist symbolism of the 12-story Jarmulowsky Bank building, two blocks away at the southwest corner of Orchard and Canal Streets." After the paper moved out of the building (it is still being printed to this day) a Chinese family purchased the real estate and used it as a church for several years until it was turned into condos a few years ago. The original design of the building was never touched however, and busts of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels still adorn the Northern facade.

The neighborhood is much different than it was then, and the rich history of the Forward building is not recalled by its residents on a regular basis, but it is still present. It lingers and it gets added to as new experiences contribute to it and as time goes on and new and diverse people cycle in and out of the space.

New York Times article click here

America's Foundation: click to enlarge

In Ian Frazier first essay from Gone To New York titled "Antipodes", he discusses what exists below the Earth's surface beneath New York and other part of the world. He describes the vast oceans that cover the majority of the planet and the infinitely deep trenches that we have barely been able to explore. It is an intriguing and overwhelming question to ponder what lies below our feet. A recent article from New Scientist describes what is probably the most ambitious seismological project ever conducted. Its called USArray. Its goal is to essentially conduct an ultrasound scan across North America. If it succeed it will generate an unprecedented 3D picture of what lies beneath the continent.

The New Scientist article describes the project: "It is a mammoth undertaking, during which USArray's scanner - a set of 400 transportable seismometers - will sweep all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Having started off in California in 2004, it is now just east of the Rockies covering a north-south swathe stretching from Montana's border with Canada down past El Paso on the Texas-Mexico border. By 2013, it should have reached the north-east coast, and its mission end."

For such a fundamental idea as what lies beneath our feet, our general understanding is extremely limited. The current theory of plate tectonics was only developed in the 1960s. This theory supposes that the Earth's crust, or lithosphere, is divided into a number of crustal plates resembling jigsaw puzzle pieces, each of which moves on the plastic asthenosphere (the region below the lithosphere) more or less independently to collide with, slide under, or move past adjacent plates. These enormous plates carry entire continents and chunks of ocean and are constantly moving. When two plates collide one often dives beneath the other. That process, known as subduction, can create forces strong enough to build up spectacular mountain ranges such as the still-growing Andes in South America or the Rocky mountains of the western US and Canada.

But there is still much that we don't about during these slow transitions beneath the Earth surface that have been occurring for millions of years. How exactly does the path deep underground relate to features we can see on the surface?

Le Corbusier once remarked that New York's skyscrapers are too small. Most New Yorker's thought this meant that they weren't tall enough, that they needed to be built higher. He was referring to the ground plan being too small, however. Manhattan is a dense compacted city. For many decades it has been the biggest, the tallest, and the best. But New York is no longer able to compete in terms of size with future cities such as Shanghai for example.

In 1999 Abitare magazine published a special issue devoted to New York City, where they asked several architects to make some sort of comment about New York. Lebbeus Woods made a drawing of Manhattan with both the East River and the Hudson drained. He wanted to suggest "that maybe lower Manhattan – not lower downtown, but lower in the sense of below the city – could form a new relationship with the planet. So, in the drawing, you see that the East River and the Hudson are both dammed. They’re purposefully drained, as it were. The underground – or lower Manhattan – is revealed, and, in the drawing, there are suggestions of inhabitation in that lower region."

Lower Manhattan: by Lebbeus Woods, Abitare Magazine 1999

I have always been struck by this image and consider it a profound notion. Seeing the depth and scale of the planet that we walk on, even in a conceptual drawing is overwhelming. Similar to the impact of witnessing the spectacular depth of the Grand Canyon, we are forced to confront our own scale and relationship to the Earth. Recent natural disasters have reminded us that nature is still a force to be reckoned with. Man is only part of much larger systems, and the part can never control the whole. If we want to continue our civilizations existence on this planet we are going to have to rethink and reconsider our relationship to the natural environment. Perhaps understanding the composition of the planet will open up a new realm for exploration and future inhabitation.

phrenology chart: the psudo-science of the human personality

Is it understood that human beings are separated from all other living organisms by our superior cognition that allows us to contemplate our own existence. With the help of images and language we not only understand our capability, but we use it to construct environments and experiences within our own mind. It is a phenomenon that has always intrigued human beings.

In Paul Auster's City of Glass, several of the characters grapple with loneliness and isolation and the various mental manifestations that result from it. When the simple mystery author Quinn takes on the role of the more glamourous detective Auster, he describes how he begins to thoroughly enjoy the role and experience of pretending to be someone else even though he is aware that it is just a character. "Although he still had the same body, the same mind, the same thoughts, he felt that he had somehow been taken out of himself, as if he no longer had to walk around with the burden of his own consciousness." Quinn was able to transform himself into someone else, to take on an entirely different identity and improve his very sense of self with nothing other than his thoughts. He continues, "By a simple trick of the intelligence, a deft little twist of naming, he felt incomparably lighter and freer." (p.82)

Human beings have created a world of their own that exists separately from the rest of the environment. Governments, institutions, social groups--all these human constructs have relegated human beings to a psychological world of their own construct. While we all share this capacity in common, we all live completely different lives in the virtual space of our brains. This not only allows us to shape our own personalities but causes us have unique experiences and feelings of everyday environments and situations. One persons impressions of a city will never be identical to someone else's. Later in the story after Quinn (Auster) has been following Stillman for some time, he explains, "Quinn felt no closer to Stillman then when he first started following him. He had lived Stillman's life, walked at his pace, seen what he had seen, and the only thing he felt now was the man's impenetrability." (p.105) This comment speaks to the fact of human reality that everyone experiences space differently. Even if you walk the same streets and gaze at the same sights, you will only truly be able to experience it in your own terms.

The quantum coherence of liquid crystalline organisms

In Yi-Fu Tuan's essay Time and Place, he describes the relationship of time and place as an intricate problem that invites different approaches. The three that Tuan explores are: time as motion or flow and place as a pause in the temporal current; attachment to a place as a function of time; and place as time made visible, or place as memorial to times past. According to the laws of Newton, if you know the initial conditions of any object in space, it is possible to predict the future of that object as well as retrodict the past. Time plays no part, it is reversible. This universe of absolute space-time views things as separate solid object with definite locations.

Thermodynamics, which is roughly the way in which systems exchange energy and matter with their environment, introduced times arrow into physics and hence the idea of irreversible processes. If the world is a big machine, then entropy implies it is slowing down, energy is leaking out, it could not last for ever, and time therefore, took on a new meaning. However, if we observe the world around us it is clear that some processes such as evolutionary biology are speeding up. Ilya Prigogine revolutionized thermodynamics by showing that the classical results were only valid for closed systems, where the overall quantities of energy are always conserved. If one allows an intense flow of energy in or out of the system (pushing it far from equilibrium), the number and type of historical outcomes greatly increases. Instead of a unique and simple form of stability, we now have multiple coexisting forms of varying complexity. Moreover, when a system switches from one stable state to another (at a critical point called a bifurcation) minor fluctuations may play a crucial role in deciding the outcome. At this point systems will either dissolve into chaos or radically self-organize and jump to a higher level of complexity. This new state is termed a dissipative structure and demonstrates how entropy can actually produce order.

Deterministic physics views the world as a static machine. Objects exist in space and time, where as organisms in essence are of space-time, meaning that they create space-time by their actions that are not always predictable. Physics deals with deterministic systems, but biology is an evolutionary process. Thermodynamics proves that the 'universal laws are not so universal after all. In fact, they only apply to local regions of reality (such as the motion of a pendulum, or planetary movement). Most phenomena of interest us are open systems in which time plays a much more crucial role. Einstein's theory of relativity also helped to break up Newton's perfect world and asserts a multitude of space-time frames, each tied to a particular observer, who therefore not only has a different clock, but also a different map.

The living organism maintain a complex level of quantum coherence. This means that every molecule in an organism, though it is moving, maintains a relationship to that of its neighbors maximizing local freedom while also providing global coherence. Organisms are partially determined by genetics, but also communicate and send message with the environment. At any time one of these message can modulate the system causing it to mutate but still maintain the relationship of its components in relation to each other and to the whole. Similar to a giant orchestra in which every individual musician is capable of improvisation while still staying in time with the rest of the group. All of these molecules in our bodies are moving together but they give the appearance of being static. This is made possible because the molecules exist in a dynamic crystalline state that is highly sensitive to intensive effects (such as heat and pressure) and connected by a matrix that allows it to synchronize itself. Because light vibrates much faster than the coherent rhythms of molecules, organisms appear static under polarizing microscopes. This is proof of their quantum coherence.

Time is very much a factor in all processes of life. Molecules are constantly moving, combining, dissolving and recycling into other formations. Inert objects are simply the extensive (metric quantities) crystallization of processes. These historical processes account for all structures that we see around us and that constitute our reality.

The urban soundtrack of any city, particularly a metropolitan one, plays a subtle yet profound role in shaping the characteristics and inhabitability of the environment. A handful of sources have speculated as to the psychological importance of a wide variety of sounds found in any given space and how manipulating and utilizing these sounds could be implemented in the design and overall experience of the built environment. In the essay entitled Experiential Perspective, Yi-Fu Tuan asserts, "Sounds, though vaguely located, can convey a strong sense of size (volume) and of distance." The anomalous characteristics of sound--that it is mnemonic, personal, and transmittable--establishes it as an immensely promising virtual terrain. There has been a fair amount of academic speculation on the subject of sound in the built environment, but little has been contributed in terms of approachable discourse and mainstream application. How can architects and engineers begin to directly incorporate aural stimuli into the design process? "...most people function with the five senses, and these constantly reinforce each other to provide the intricately ordered and emotion charged world in which we live," Tuan states. Taking this into account could greatly broaden architectural practice to include holistic sensory design.

Modernist architecture has obsessed itself with visual transparency. The majority of architectural design and urban planning is generally obsessed with optical aesthetics and the affect that this has on the user, overlooking the powerful influence of other senses. By introducing aural transparency as a design component, architecture becomes exponentially more impactful and gains site specific uniqueness not present in most contemporary transplanted architecture. Amplifying, isolating, or replaying certain sounds gathered from the nearby environment would allow for entirely new experiences to be had by occupants. Swapping or mixing certain noises could produce disorienting even hallucinatory affects. If you don't like the sounds of Shanghai, swap it with the sound of New York. Imagine the different thoughts and experiences that one can have traversing a city listening to popular music. New observations are made and subtleties are realized that may have gone unnoticed without importing alternate sounds. The same could be said for urban soundtracks and the potential of blurring the lines between ones thought process and the sounds of the environment around you. We all become accustomed to various "sound tags" which sometimes even elicit involuntary responses. Hearing a siren, one usually stops the car immediately or pulls off the road. Hearing a gun shot would most likely cause an individual to quickly duck down. Additionally, we use sound recognition to anticipate our own actions. A person riding a skateboard for example may adjust their position of balance based on the sounds and vibrations of different surfaces. If we consider architecture as a truly multidisciplinary field that amalgamates sensory perception, precise sound design within certain spaces could profoundly affect a user’s behavior by facilitating a type of deliberate synethesia in which stimulation of one cognitive pathway leads to automatic experiences in another sensory pathway.

The intent is not to "tune" the world in order to make it sound better. No one can place a monopoly on what "sounds good". But to understand how soundscapes unconsciously but undoubtedly have psychological effects on the behaviors and emotions of inhabitants would be a worthwhile pursuit. One initial goal would be to parametrically model acoustic frequency in select environments, similar to how light is modeled through cities when developing buildings proposals. These sound maps would take into account different times of day, during different seasons, in differing atmospheric conditions throughout the year, and then introducing the flow of people, traffic, and information throughout the spaces. Even further, these models could then be analyzed in comparison to other buildings and open spaces and then re-articulated and transposed into other domains of space. If we consider urban spaces as orchestras, in which each object or building is a unique instrument with differing acoustic qualities, we can begin to postulate how different areas could be "arranged" to produce distinct sonic environments. Certain materials diffuse sound, while others reflect it. Dense urban areas amplify or scatter certain sounds, while vast open spaces allow noises to simply fade away.

187 BOWERY, APT 5 The sociology of spaces and their affects on our everyday life is overlooked in both architecture and critical theory. While our experience of the world is formulated by the combination of five senses, most architecture is produced solely on visual considerations. Once architecture leaves the computer screen to be erected “in the flesh,” it undergoes transformations that extend far beyond the design of any one individual. Architecture does have the capacity to be inspiring, but in the grand scheme, has much less influence on behavior and use of a space then is commonly believed. Buildings appear static but they are situated in time and convey different emotion and character. Whether or not architecture decides to embrace the change and uncertainty that inevitably circulate in urbanism, individuals who are intrinsically dynamic, will continue to adapt spaces to suit their needs and desires.

In J.B. Jackson's essay The Engineered Environment, he addresses the issue of modern man feeling compelled to dominate nature and how this deep cultural mentality has infiltrated the profession of farming, which was initially a tradition founded on unity between man and nature. Jackson observes a transition from an agriculture that was once in tune with the environment to an "agribusiness" only interested in creating artificial landscapes with the help of earth-moving equipment such as the bulldozer. He attributes the transition to the rise of capitalism and the increasing eagerness for profits. There was a time when "his [the farmer] intent was usually to 'assist' nature, to encourage its more productive aspects... the traditional farmer 'studied natural systems and focused his attention on discovering and applying and applying natural laws to the behavior of these systems and on explaining the relationship and interaction of separate parts." These statements among many others of the same vein, which proliferate throughout the essay, resonate more in today's society than ever. Jackson was keenly aware (in 1966) of the continued complications of an increasingly consumer driven society and its affect on the landscape. Powerful technology, misguided within the framework of capitalism has degraded the natural environment. In addition to creating larger farms, which are simply large flat uniform surfaces, mechanical equipment encourage an increasingly artificial topography. Farms are no longer ecological systems, slightly altered by man, but a new and vast rural landscape that is simply a form of utilitarian architecture. Jackson writes, "while facilities in many cases are designed to the requirements of plants and animals, in others the plant or animal is adapted to the facility. And the trend seems clearly to be in the later direction: the modification of the animal or plant to suit the engineered environment." In this case he commenting on the early introduction of biotechnological and genetic engineering being put to a negative use. Jackson believes that the root of these poor decisions stem from weak societal beliefs. "There is a notable absence of any cult of agrarianism, any reference to those beliefs which only a century ago were so widely and proudly held: that the farmer, because of his hardy independence, his closeness to nature, his love of the land, was a superior type of American. Now the overriding theme is always the way the farmer can make both ends meet and plan for expansion." These comments should not be taken lightly, especially by today's generation of environmental engineers. Architects and agriculturalists alike should revert to a design methodology similar to that of his forebears: to design according to an order prescribed by nature or divine law, while simultaneously taking into account and properly utilizing new technologies and scientific discoveries. "There are few technological limits to our capacity to transform the land to suit our needs; all that is lacking are imagination and a sense of purpose"

The reductivist methodology that has permeated several generations of philosophy and social science is becoming increasingly outdated. A paradigm shift is occurring, triggered by the increasingly blurred boundary that exists between all systems. The inclination to reduce and simplify phenomena to their simplest components has continually overlooked the irreducible social complexity the arrises from the upward movement through various assemblages and throughout history--the whole of which does not equal the sum of its parts. Jackson insists that the world has been fragmented, largely as a result of emerging technologies, and only studied as isolated structures of little significance on their own. However, being able to disect and analyze the fragments of the world simultaneously reveals patterns of behavior inherent in all complex systems, whether geological, economic or linguistic. This informs a dynamic and non-linear view of the world as an aggregate of highly interconnected bricolages of self-adaptive, amorphous systems.

Understood in these terms, the idea of territory is extremely intriguing. Territory, from the word terra, meaning land, implies a relationship with the environment. Territories are an instrument for organization and navigation. In biology an organism that defends an area against intrusion is territorial. This behavior is the action or reaction of an organism in response to external threats towards a space that is defined by that organism. Territories are not defined by a line or a wall, but an invisible and transformative boundary. Urbanization is in direct conflict with this definition of space. It is rational and reductivist and therefore deterritorialization in the sense that it denies land and individual boundaries. When architecture can fully engage with the environment is will gain far more cultural significance. Disturbing these boundary lines would disturb the boundary lines of our individuality, bringing into question our sense of separateness from the built environment.