6. Jackson (2)

Here are the photos I wanted to use for my original post on the second half of Jackson. I had to get them off an old computer over spring break. And then I forgot about them. But I think they're worth sharing even now out of context. I took them in July 2003 by the Tuolumne River at Camp Tawonga near Yosemite.

My Counselors

Tawongans @ the Tuolumne Can't you just picture us listening to Neil Young's "Down by the River" and the rest of "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"?

Our First Look: Tawonga from the road

J.B. Jackson’s chapter “Living Outdoors with Mrs. Panther” was hilarious. We learn a great deal about Jackson’s views of Modern living through his sarcastic tone as he craftily emulates/mocks the writing style of architecture magazines. It was interesting to have a window into the lives and architectural surroundings of “Young Moderns” back in 1954. What was so crazy about the situation covered in the article, the Panther family living “out of doors,” was how unnatural and inundated with modern technology their alleged outdoor living truly was. Of course, one would think that many technologies of 1954 would be outmoded by now, but parts article almost felt like they were coming out of the future – well at least the thing that melts the snow in their driveway, creating a dry path to the road. Does that exist in 2009? The very fact that Mr. and Mrs. Panther call their home life “an experiment in modern living” just furthers the silliness of their lifestyle—it is (was) a cushy, social science project (281). Their house is “temperatrolled,”—yeah my Microsoft Word does not even recognize that as a real word—so that it was always comfortable in their “play space” (that is what we call a big living room, although I would be willing to bet that even with the big tree in the middle of the room, Jackson did not feel like he was outside. The Panthers “want to live indoors just the way [they] would live outdoors: freely and informally and spaciously,” yet they do not open windows, their squash court’s exercise room has air-conditioning and a sunlamp, they own no pets, and their kids are forbidden to “pick wild plants… fondle stray animals or play with children who might be dirty or socially maladjusted” (282-283).

Now Entering CT!

So I think the article is funny, but I also feel bad for these so-called “Young Moderns.” For several summers when I was younger, I went to Camp Tawonga along the Tuolumne River (near Yosemite). These three-week-long periods were certainly some of my dirtier stints as a teenager. It was unavoidable. The dust’s omnipresence made it necessary for my secret stash of Sudafed. But I was in heaven. Even without electricity in the cabins, we survived—we only really needed batteries to power walkie-talkies with the boy bunks, anyway. One of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of camp were our backpacking trips out in Yosemite Valley. Recipe: 1 Wilderness leader + 2 Counselors + 12 Campers + assorted tarps, trail mix, bear cans, bug spray, etc. = 3 days and 2 nights literally living “out of doors.” From defending ourselves from a close-call with a bear invading our campsite to surviving 23 miles of hiking in 2 days to creating an impromptu shelter during a rainstorm (NOTE: three different trips), all the while purifying our own giardia-ridden river water, I’d say we could teach the Panthers a thing or two about living in a natural landscape. Jackson himself might even be impressed.

Secret Beach: my favorite place on the Tuolumne

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).

Whirling Dervish: The whirling dervishes belong to a sect of Islam that believe in loving everything I was inspired to write about JB Jackson's chapter in Istanbul, albeit a little late, to theorize about why he would write about Istanbul in the first place. I visited Istanbul when I was 13 and I shall always remember it as one of the greatest vacations I have ever taken. My family hired a young female guide to show us the city's mosques, palaces, museums etc and the "real" Istanbul. Our hotel was situated between the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, walking distance from the Grand Bazaar. Though time has slightly softened and blurred my memories of the trip, certain things are as vivid to me today as they were when I experienced them. I can understand why JB Jackson loved and wrote about Istanbul. The city is a magical maze of scent and color, the people are alive with ambition and emotion - no one sleep walks on the city's streets. A whirling dervish performance that we were invited to was a perfect metaphor for the city itself. The dervishes twirled and danced until their movements created a perceptible humming in the air, the dim lights and the warm colors of their skirts had a dizzying effect on me, chaotic yet perfectly in control. JB Jackson writes that in many ways Istanbul ought to be a model for other cities. Some might scoff and ask why - Istanbul is notoriously dirty, its streets winding and complicated, the foundations of its buildings crumbling. It is because Istanbul has a spirit, Istanbul is a whirling dervish. How many other cities can be compared to such a marvelous thing?

A still from Play Time
1: The Writer
In Taking on the Modern Movement, part 5 of Landscape in Sight, J.B. Jackson presents his ideas about modernist architecture and the international style through a series of short essays. In, these essays, Jackson conveys his point of view that modern architecture, which is essentially an intellectual style of art, is impractical for everyday human needs. Modernists "aim not to improve the lot of Man, but desire to create pure geometrical forms ... independent of the past, independent of the earth and life." The reality is that buildings "are required to sell goods, to establish social position, to inspire confidence, to impress or elevate or escite."
Jackson called for an architecture "responsive to the needs of the present," and modernism just wasn't cutting it.

2: The Architect
Le Corbusier thought that modernism would save the world, he really did. He strongly believed that his designs, and the designs of his peers, would allow for a more at-ease, happy, relaxed, and peaceful way of life. By stripping the environment of ornament and focusing on pure forms, the inhabitants of Modern spaces could, theoretically, occupy themselves with their well-being instead of being distracted by ornament or having to worry about any non-essentials.
One could argue that Corbusier's utopian vision was never realized due to the fact that as the proper international style became more popular, it was mostly replicated with poor materials, unqualified architects, and shoddy construction. The truth is that time has shown us that the restrictions, rationalism, and hard-edgedness of modernism is not very conducive to the general activities of everyday human life.

3: The Filmmaker
Film historian Philip Kemp once said that "if [Jacques Tati's 1967 film] Play Time has a plot, it's how the curve comes to reassert itself over the straight line." This film provides an account of daily life in a Modernist Paris. By focusing on the tension and awkwardness between human activity and the built environment, Tati successfully hints at how the uniformity and supposed logic of the International style can interfere with and confuse its inhabitants.

While Corbusier may like to think that everyone who comes in contact with a Modernist structure will instantly be as happy as Jackson's "Mrs. Panther," Tati shows us that the unpredictability, whimsy, and unboundedness of human nature is perhaps better suited to slightly different surroundings.

Landscape?
I thought it was very interesting, if not to be expected, that JB Jackson took the time to spend a chapter discussing the meaning of “landscape.” It is certainly a word that when thought about manages to dodge any simple definition, and eventually becomes quite confusing when trying to define it. Jackson is right to see its most common manifestation as influenced by artists. The landscape to them was a single shot and angle of some natural confluence of trees, rivers, mountains, prairies, meadows, fields, etc. This is a definition I think most people still hold close to themselves and would not mistake. It is one of the few things I actually think we might refer to as a “landscape.”

I was trying to think of when I say landscape with any sense of it being the correct word. In truth, I think describing art is just about the only time I would say it. I might refer to the “landscaping” of a home or a building or a park as well, but again, this is far from what a landscape truly is. Both are pre-fabricated sights that are supposed to encourage a love of nature. The artist chooses his angles and colors wisely just as a landscaper might choose a nice arrangement of hedges, trees, and flowers. Somehow, these have actually nothing to do with natural land.

So why, when someone says, the American landscape, do we know what that means? We would almost never refer to anything in America by saying, “look at that landscape.” Perhaps it would be check out that view, or check out that building, or check out this road, but rarely would you hear, check out this landscape. It doesn’t really make sense. In truth, I think it is because our idea of landscapes is that they are fixed and with some order. We often note views and buildings because they affect individually, not as a collection of images. Landscapes on the other hand, when not painted or built by hand around a garden, are all-inclusive. They represent the order of all things in a given realm. I could say the Yosemite landscape and that would make sense. And in this case JB Jackson can say the American landscape and have it make sense. At the end, I commend Jackson for digging in to this subject as it is often the way we refer to things that elucidate the most about the nature of those things themselves. In this way, I think landscape is a fascinating word.

Flatpak: In Aspen, ColoradoVinyl siding, once nearly synonymous with cheap and prefabricated architecture, is one material these designers won't touch with a ten-foot-pole. Over the past ten years, architects like Michelle Kaufmann (Breezehouse), Charles Lazor (Flatpak), and Kieran Timberlake (Loblolly) have been busy revolutionizing the field.

The new prefab architecture movement plays off the contradictions that J.B. Jackson explores at the end of "The Movable Dwelling." "Now that environmentalism has become an established philosophy," he writes, "the values we stress are stability and permanence... Still, we cannot help being reminded... that we have a second architectural tradition, a tradition of mobility and short-term occupancy" (223). Though Flatpak and Loblolly are movable homes, they're actually built stronger than traditional homes in America because they must withstand being shipped on the back of a truck. In that sense, they're designed to last longer and be more permanent than balloon-frame constructions. However, Flatpak and Loblolly are both designed modularly and can be disassembled and moved to another site, making them as mobile as the medieval peasant's homes Jackson describes. These prefab houses are designed to be flexible, catering to both long-term and short-term occupants.

Foreclosed pool skating: from the NY Times

My new favorite blog, The Vigorous North, recently pointed out the weird phenomenon, as reported by the New York Times, of skateboarders emptying and cleaning many of California's tens of thousands of pools on foreclosed properties so that they can skate in them. These unattended pools have become "vernal pools" with their own ecosystems, including becoming the breeding grounds for enormous populations of mosquitoes, raising the risk of a West Nile epidemic. The governmental response to this is to distribute "mosquito fish" (Gambusia affinis), tiny mosquito larvae-chompers, into the pools, but skaters have a different idea.

The skaters find the foreclosures on a variety of websites, or by just cruising neighborhoods for signs of foreclosure. They then enter the backyards, pump the water and clean the muck out of the pools, and, once it's all dry, they skate! They make sure to skate in "short bursts during the workday to avoid disturbing neighbors or attracting police attention",  they take their trash with them, and don't leave graffiti all so as to maintain some idea of public service. And indeed, they are reducing the mosquito breeding grounds by creating a makeshift skate park, discontinuously spread across the suburban backyards of Fresno and other California towns, attracting skaters from around the world.

In thinking about Jackson’s essay “Jefferson, Thoreau, and After,” it didn’t take long for me to arrive at the conclusion that neither Jefferson nor Thoreau offers a vision of the landscape that provides everything I would hope to derive from it. Like Jefferson, I want a public life, one engaged with my neighbors and the body politic, but like Thoreau, I also want some measure of privacy, regular access to green space, and the ability to occasionally escape to an entirely different context. Further complicating the picture is the fact that I live in a city, the environment that both Jefferson and Thoreau loved to hate. Yet I think there may be something that would prompt Thoreau and Jefferson alike to take a second look at cities, and that might begin to make our cities into places where both agrarian and romantic needs are met: urban agriculture.

The idea of growing our food in the city deals most obviously with Jefferson’s critique of urban settings: that they are places of “useless luxury and corrupt wealth” (175) where no one has access to the land. As Jackson describes it, Jefferson believed that “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of god,” and he worked to create a republic where  “a few as possible shall be without a small portion of land.” (175) There are many urban farms in existence in the united states today that give city dwellers a sense of what it means to work the land, while also serving to reinvigorate a depressed urban area. For instance, the farm Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin employs local people at a complex that includes six greenhouses, two fish runs, outdoor pens for livestock, and 5 beehives. Farmers teach local people how to grow their own food, while producing food to sell at local markets. (Click here for a nice Youtube Video).

A similar project exists within New York City, in the form of Red Hook Community Farm, run by the organization Added Value. The farm employs local schoolchildren, and its produce meets a critical need in a community where there are few supermarkets.  Finally, for anyone who does not believe that food could be grown in a place like Manhattan, there is the vertical farm concept, which would convert skyscrapers in major cities into food producing machines.

I don’t for a minute believe that any of these initiatives would convince Thoreau to leave Conchord, Mass and move to the city. I do, however, think that Jackson presents an overly harsh portait of Thoreau’s feelings about agriculture. Thoreau may not have loved all farmers, but he grew beans of his own when he lived alone at Walden Pond, and in Walden he describes how trying to maximize the health of his crop gave him a heightened sense of his surroundings. I suspect that Thoreau would at least appreciate the way that urban farms can heighten people’s understanding of natural processes.

Urban agriculture cannot make us good citizens, as Jefferson wanted. Nor can it give us the unspoiled nature that Thoreau idealized. But it can bring us closer to both our neighbors and natural systems, and it does something even more important by diffusing the tendency to believe that our utopia lies elsewhere. The environmental historian William Cronon wrote the following words as an argument against romanticizing wilderness, but they can be interpreted as a general caution against looking too far afield for solutions to the problems of our landscape. “By imagining that our true home is in the wilderness,” he wrote, “we forgive ourselves the homes we actually inhabit.” (11) What’s nice about urban agriculture is that it offers city dwellers both community and nature, without requiring them to leave the places where they live.

Jackson analyzes the impact transportation has had on the American landscape and perspective in the section The Emerging American Present. He discusses the birth of roadside developments along the American highway, with its rest stops, tourist traps, themed restaurants, etc. Jackson brings attention to the common notion of bashing these developments. He attempts to understand what the critics propose to be done with these establishments since they fill voids for both the working economy and for social leisure.

In trying to further understand the establishments, Jackson analyzes the motives in their construction and design. He discusses the strategic positioning of roadside developments every 100 to 150 miles, “the average distance covered between meals” (192). He recognizes the need for structures to be attractive to those passing by at 40+ mph, and therefore the façade and sign of the establishments were given the primary focus. Both were simplistic in their design, and depended upon the shock value of flashing lights to lure customers in. A shed was thrown onto the back end to house the restaurant or store of knickknacks.

Anti-Billboard Campaign Jackson also discusses the billboard or printed-word phenomenon of the US. Like the establishments, billboards have become competitive in their wow factors, now especially with digital and mechanical billboards. Jackson suggests that rather than having the ‘nightmare of words’ stamped across the landscape, advertising experts should create a set series of symbols to use (196). He doesn’t however suggest that they should be removed all together, only limited, stating that there is some comfort in seeing a series of billboards alongside the road after miles and miles of no civilization.

Several laws have been issued throughout the years to eliminate the number of boards, such as the Highway Beautification Act of 1964. Nowadays, with the help of the internet, private organizations are springing up with online blogs petitioning people to help eliminate the printed-word pollution. The Anti-Advertising Agency (http://antiadvertisingagency.com/category/projects/poster-camp) analyzes the role of market media in public space, asking people to contribute their thoughts and opinions on how to remove mass advertisement from our landscape. The organization Illegal Billboards (http://illegalbillboards.org/) on the other hand provides an outlook for the NYC public to post information about suspicious giant advertisements that may be illegal. The organization provides information of to send information on the suspicious ad to the NYC Department of Buildings.