noah's blog

A Chicago suburb from an airplane window: May 2008Welcome to Gerund Phrases. As expressions of action, these posts demonstrate the varied approaches I follow in characterizing places. One of the defining characteristics of "place," for me, is the evidence of activity. Activity does not necessitate human impact or mobility. An open field - or an abandoned barn - can display just as much of the impact of external forces, such as nature or time, as large-scale urban infrastructure projects or an artist's installation.

The bottom line is: something happened in that space.

For all our in-depth reading on perceptions of space and place, the concept of activity as a fundamental signifier of spaces never made it to the forefront of our discussions. I don't say that as a critique, merely as an observation. Perhaps being located in New York has blinded us to the significance of activity. Or, as a reaction to urban living, we consciously segregate "inactive" spaces from active ones - city vs. country, for instance.

Do these posts illustrate the similarities between supposed "inactive" spaces and visibly bustling spaces? Hardly. Rather, they attempt to summarize, no matter how haphazardly, the ways in which methods of "place-making" and understanding spaces take shape in context, apart from the texts from this course.

Gerund Phrases is an experiment of sorts - of design, of planning, of exploration. It is May 2009 - the course is over, I am graduating - but this experiment is just beginning.

I agreed to meet with myself at a coffeeshop near both of us. When I found myself, I was drinking a cold ginger ale and flipping through my notes, as I am prone to do. I got right down to business:

Me: Why public art?
Myself: Well, for this project I knew I wanted to do something that was related in some way to design. As a student and ... hopefully as a professional ... I have primarily been doing work in urban design and planning, among many other things. I wanted to work on a project that involved intentionally designed spaces within the very unpredictable public realm. Public art exemplifies that, in that it imposes crafted design in spaces that really... have no other formal planning. Well, that's not quite right - plazas, squares, and lobbies are very high-design. But they are typically open spaces without a specific program to follow, whereas typically public art pieces have a specific agenda.

Me: That's all well and good, but really, how does the panel discussion relate to this course?
Myself: The discussion really felt like New York, if that makes any sense at all. It was essentially public, if you could afford $10, so it attracted people from all walks of life who had varying levels of interest in public art. Some were AIA members, some were just folks off the street who wanted free wine. In that sense, the conversation became typical of the New York typified in Ian Frazier’s Gone to New York. The organic nature of the public discussion reminded me of the sense of New York Frazier conveys in his book, which hinges on the unpredictable, the confrontational, and the eclectic, whether in his essay on the character of Canal Street or when the cops appear in his open door.

The Waterfalls: An example of highly-publicized temporary public art in New York. The Waterfalls, by Olafur Eliasson, proved to be one of the city's more disastrous projects. The salt water sprayed from what were called "glorified fountains" ended up killing trees by The River Cafe and on Governor's Island.New York is chock full of places that are deliberately manipulated to affect the viewers’ experiences. Museums, parks, galleries, restaurants, airports, train stations – the list goes on. Arguably fewer spaces are manipulated to enhance the viewers’ experiences. One who could argue against that assertion would be architect Jean Parker Phifer, AIA, whose recent book, Public Art New York, catalogs permanent public art installations across all five boroughs. In these public spaces, artists have been commissioned to create pieces to attract viewers and create an aesthetic that leaves a mark on an individual’s experience of the space, and therefore, inform their sense of place. Just last night, Phifer led a panel discussion at the Center for Architecture on public art and architecture in New York. Joining her were artist James Carpenter, architect Todd Schliemann of Polshek Partnership, and David Thurm, VP of Operations at The New York Times. The three were selected for their unique perspectives on the process of commissioning, designing, and installing public art in new buildings and spaces around the city.

"Hit the town. It hits back.": Illustration by Jacob Thomas for TimeOut NY.Contemporary literature perpetuates cultural understandings of Lower Manhattan as an entertainment zone rather than a residential neighborhood. In his essay “Downtown,” Colson Whitehead structures the essay around the experience of nightlife. The essay begins at a bar at the beginning of the night, and ends at sunrise. Throughout, Whitehead points to specific signifiers of subcultures at work:

“Hipsters seek refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture. There is some discussion as to whether or not they are still cool but then they are calmed by the obscure location and the arrival of their kind” (Whitehead 128).

The restaurant industry is also identified as a part of an exclusive experience of downtown: “What do you feel like doing. Dunno. Everybody else knows where the hot new restaurants are” (Whitehead 126). That creative writers are perpetuating cultural stereotypes of urban life is not surprising, but their role in the culture machine has a significant affect on the cultural understanding of place and therefore, through the political and economic processes of the growth and community machines, the physical landscape of Lower Manhattan.

Frazier’s accounts of living on Canal Street reminded me of my own time living and working in the area. Frazier focuses on the visual stimuli of the area in his essay, “Canal Street,” but what I find so striking about the Canal Street area is the people on the street. Though the 6 train was a mere two blocks away, I would regularly brave the hordes of counterfeit-hungry tourists to walk up the significantly less-trafficked West Broadway to get to class. The contrast between the denizens of SoHo and the Canal Street visitors is obvious: the average body mass index skyrockets once one reaches Canal Street. My entire sense of Canal Street resonates with Frazier’s, but his account focuses on the congestion in the street, not on the sidewalk. Between the backed-up vehicles and the slow-paced pedestrians, the entire artery lurches forward at what can be an exasperatingly slow pace.

Frazier’s description of the history of Canal Street particularly interested me because on my frequent walks to and from work and class I would consider the fact that this congested street with thousands of cars, trucks, and people, was once a waterway. In many ways, the street still serves that function, as a manmade thru-way across Manhattan with storefronts that function more like freight storage than retail shops.

But then, last summer, the police raids picked up momentum. Suddenly, scores of counterfeiters were shut down and their storefronts shuttered. I was working in West TriBeCa at the time, and had since moved out to Park Slope. Following the crackdowns, however, I immediately noticed a change in the character of Canal Street. While the trucks and cars still roared along at their usual pace, the stream of tourists and other pedestrians all but vanished. Almost entire blocks were vacated, with only a few stragglers left behind. And despite the traffic, the entire character of the street was quieter. In a testament to the informal and ruthlessly defiant character of both counterfeiters and Canal Street, by that afternoon, the salesmen had returned, unleashing garbage bags and luggage bags stuffed to the brim with all the fake Louis Vuitton bags a Midwestern housewife or Jersey tween could desire.

I took these series of pictures consecutively on a walk East on Canal Street from 6th Avenue. The shuttered storefronts first caught my eye, then the swarm of counterfeiters emerged on the corner of Broadway, and as I continued on with my day, a fleet of NYPD vehicles flew East on Canal – right by the counterfeiters they had detained in what ended up being a largely symbolic gesture.
Shuttered Stores on Canal Fake goods for the masses
The Fuzz

Traces of New York: 4/1/06-3/31/07 By Neil FreemanI honestly put off posting about City of Glass because I could not think of how to write about the book in relationship to concepts of place. The plot, riveting in its own way, captivated me so much that it took me awhile to sort out my thoughts about space, place, and City of Glass. I was immediately attracted to the “pursuit” of Stillman, and the meticulous tracking of his path around the Upper West Side. I contemplated writing up a walking tour of that area for my post, following one of the letter shapes scrawled in the pages of the book. I also toyed with the idea of following Quinn’s route from the Upper West Side, all the way downtown, and up again before retreating to the alley by Peter Stillman’s residence on 69th Street. When I began thinking about the route, I found myself wondering if it in fact formed some sort of pattern of letters that would reveal some fundamental truth about the book’s relationship to the city.

It doesn’t.

All my ruminations on routes lead me to think about different visual interpretations of places, specifically in the field of mapping. The MTA has a particularly distorted view of New York City, as depicted in the skewed subway map. Obviously, maps are subject to some form of distortion, but I wonder: what information does one prioritize on a map and why? Clearly the MTA just wants to fit every station along every line on one page without regard to topographical accuracy. But what other ways can we envision New York as a navigable place?

Neil Freeman is an artist and urban planner whose website, Fake Is The New Real, offers alternative interpretations of cities, and even countries, as places. I was first introduced to the site through its page on Subways At Scale, a presentation of major subway lines in cities around the world on the same scale. The results make for some intriguing line drawings, but also offer some kind of navigable map. Those familiar with the cities whose subway lines are depicted on the site can discern in some way or another where different areas of the cities are. In the New York subway drawing, you can tell where Manhattan is, where Central Park is, and even where Staten Island is, without any designated markers. In another exhibit, Freeman depicts Skyscrapers In Order, for the cities of New York, Chicago, and Boston. Again, they are line drawings of skyscrapers taller than 100 meters, drawn in height order over the same plain. The visual effect is a bit frenetic, but it reminded me of Quinn’s realization that Stillman was spelling the TOWER OF BABEL on his walks. Questioning our own visual orientation in space definitely complicates our notion of “a sense of place.”
Skyscrapers In Order: New York: By Neil Freeman

In another clever exercise, Freeman depicts Connected Places, by connecting all the identically named places in the United States with a line. (Buy a print, for a mere $300!) The result could pass as a clear map of the Lower 48.
Connected Places: By Neil Freeman

If I was really on top of my game, I would draw out the route of Quinn’s ambling journey across Manhattan and post the image here. I will aim to accomplish that by the end of the semester.

Biomimicry: A termite mound inspires eco-friendly ventilation in Zimbabwe.
Termites “make nests that soar like skyscrapers” (101). The impressive feature of these structures, besides their scale in relation to the size of their insect creators, is the expert system of ventilation. As Tuan explains, “Termites’ nests contain not only elaborate ventilated living quarters for themselves but also fungus gardens for their form of food production” (101). Architects have a lot to learn from termite mounds – and they have, as the field of biomimicry has begun to expand.

Biomimicry is essentially the planned design by humans of existing natural processes. By studying behaviors of other life forms, architects and designers can address problems in our built environment through a better understanding of nature. Architects have studied African termite mounds to develop ventilation systems that use less energy. The Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe, completed in the mid-90’s, is the country’s largest office and shopping complex and has no central heating or cooling. Instead, the building stays regulated through a series of vents that draw in or expel air depending on the indoor climate, a direct recreation of the termite’s arduous task of opening and closing gaps in their mounds. Because they saved $3.5 million in ventilation costs, the owners of Eastgate Centre can charge their tenants 20% less rent than neighboring buildings.

The Porcullis House
The Eastgate Centre in turn inspired London's Portcullis House, completed in 2001 to provide offices for the Members of Parliament. Located directly across the street from Big Ben, the building uses the “chimney effect” of ventilation quite literally. Unlike the Eastgate Centre, however, Portcullis House is one of the most expensive office buildings in the world, with offices running at more than 1 million pounds per Member of Parliament.

Biomimicry is, in a sense, evidence of Tuan’s assertion that “architects, with the help of technology, continue to enlarge the range of human spatial consciousness” by “remaking” old forms on an entirely new scale (116). As these developments unfold, improved systems of ventilation could in turn affect our perception of “indoor” and “outdoor” space in the conventional sense that Tuan describes (107). Termites are not the only inspiration for green design – there are plenty of other examples listed at the Biomimicry Institute.

Comment #2: "trying waaaaayyyy too hard.": One of the photographs from The Brooklyn Museum's "Click!" exhibit that received the most comments online.

Breaking: the concept of crowds is changing as a result of the Internet. Not incredibly shocking news, but what has emerged in the wake of Web 2.0 is an intricate society of different communities that “crowd” around different types of information. The way these communities identify themselves online can (and often do) differ radically from their “real life” personas, but the collective often remains easily identifiable on the Internet.

In “Spaciousness and Crowding,” Yi-Fu Tuan asks, “What constitutes crowding?” (59) While Yi-Fu Tuan covers the spatial aspects of "crowding," I started to think more about the "crowd" as a social entity in different spaces. The advent of the Internet has only further complicated the possible answers. Social networking sites such as the ubiquitous Facebook and its former, more juvenile counterpart MySpace (nevermind Friendster and the many previous incarnations), have translated day-to-day relationships to public pages, where information about events and groups is disseminated and introduces even more members to its “crowd.” Facebook has taken a tamer form than previous social networking sites, with a uniform design and meticulous privacy settings. The user’s ability to customize which “friends” can see particular aspects of their lives is more alienating than other facets of Internet “crowding.”

The other giant elephant in the Internet room is YouTube, which has begun to expand its own social networking features. The success of YouTube, however, has been based on large-scale word-of-mouth exchanges of information. Certain videos become “destinations” for crowds of millions of viewers to catch a glimpse of a clip from a TV show, a politician’s gaff, or a celebrity nip slip. Although these crowds do not exist in the same place, they occupy the same space and gain the same set of sensory information that can define a “crowd.”

I could go on. Message boards exist for every topic imaginable, from video games to parenting to neighborhood news. The nature of these boards varies according to content and audience. Commenting on news sites, blogs, and other Internet content has developed into a whole separate group of sub-cultures – Gawker commenters are snarky, TMZ and YouTube commenters are crass and vulgar, and Perez Hilton commenters are perhaps the most vapid and inane of the bunch. In fact, this very website attracts a distinct crowd in itself – of students, teachers, and maybe the occasional parent who keeps a close eye on his or her child.

The next step in mobilizing these new crowds has already begun. Obama expertly manipulated the masses in his 2008 campaign via Internet networking in a completely unprecedented fashion. Pitchfork Media, an exclusive music news site, has restructured their annual outdoor music festival opening to have users vote and determine each act’s set lists. Last year, the Brooklyn Museum hosted an exhibition called “Click!,” a “crowd-curated” exhibition of photography on the theme of “The Changing Faces of Brooklyn.” A lot of these shifts in mobilization have been attributed to a book called The Wisdom of Crowds, which I have not read but sounds like a good resource for understanding the way we think as a collective.

The ClassicModern: On 5th Ave between 15th and 16th in South Slope, sandwiched by Domino’s and a bistro – the perfect representation of the neighborhood’s manic character. At the height of the housing boom, neighborhoods in Brooklyn saw unprecedented increases in property values and demand for new upscale buildings. “South Slope,” an off-shoot of Park Slope from 9th Street to 16th Street between 5th Avenue and Prospect Park, is one of these neighborhoods. In fact, the name “Slope” has become such an attractive feature for prospective buyers and renters that brokers and uninformed gentrifiers alike have become characterizing areas outside of the greater Park Slope area as, in fact, Park Slope. The neighborhood is bounded by Prospect Avenue to the South, which is a fitting border because of its high traffic levels and its connection with the BQE. Once you get to 17th Street, you are in a neighborhood once considered Greenwood Heights, but as far as boom sellers and movers are concerned, it is still “South Slope.”

Transparent New York: All the layers of Manhattan's landscape, as envisioned by architect Brian McGrath. In his consideration of “The Word Itself,” Jackson articulates “landscape” in both concrete and abstract terms. Jackson deems “landscape” to be a shared space with a distinctive character that possesses a sense of permanence. Through his research of other interpretations of the word, including artists’ and the dictionary definition itself, he concludes that landscape is man-made, synthetic, and distinctly separate from natural spaces. Architect Brian McGrath’s computer modeling project, “Manhattan Timeformations,” presents a unique exploration of Manhattan’s landscape. By layering the different levels of manmade systems in Manhattan, McGrath, much like Jackson, articulates the “cityscape” in both concrete and abstract terms. These layers of “urban information,” as he calls them, include “geologic formation, settlement patterns, landfill, transportation and communications infrastructure, zoning laws and real estate cycles.” The inclusion of zoning laws and real estate cycles as having a permanent effect on Manhattan’s landscape relates directly to Jackson’s assertion that landscape is man-made. These social, political, and economic forces have had a direct effect on Manhattan’s development, from the early settlement of New Amsterdam to the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811, to the 1916 Zoning Law. Most of all, these forces contribute to Manhattan’s landscape as part of our “shared reality” (302). McGrath’s computer modeling provides an interactive, three-dimensional experience of Manhattan’s man made layers. The Transparent New York page provides the most detailed information about Manhattan’s landscape development. Click around to see New York in terms of historic districts, Dutch settlement, elevated trains, urban renewal, and more. For even more of McGrath’s interpretation of Manhattan’s development, check out his book, Transparent Cities (1994).