The Bombardment Periphery

{Brandgrens by West 8: Image via West 8}

A project by the Dutch landscape and urban design collective West 8 literally inscribes the limits of the destruction of Rotterdam by Luftwaffe bombers on May 14, 1940. Along the dense urban fabric of the city, famously rebuilt after the disaster, a series of solar-powered LED's mark the true fire limits. From West 8's website:

An iconic image of a flame is incorporated in circular light objects on the ground and in several information stations, that together form the marking. The image of the flame shows a visual connection with Zadkine's statue commemorating the bombing of Rotterdam. The light objects come to life at night when the solar-powered LEDs illuminate the icon. This physical marking of the fire limits is coupled with information about the historic meaning of the bombing, accessible through the information stations and a website.

{West 8, Embedded LED system, Rotterdam Brandgrens, 2007 (Source: West 8)}

As noted by A456, the design can be experienced at the intimate pedestrian level, the small lights delineating the end of carnage, pinpointing the experience of local shopkeepers and patrons.  On the other, broader scale, is the plan, which shear mass collectively illustrates the power of destruction that occurred on that day.

{West 8, Rotterdam Brandgrens, Plan, 2007 (Source: West 8)}

A456 also points us to an additional ephemeral memorial for the attack, a Mothership installation entitled The Bombardment Periphery.  On the evening on May 14, 2007, the Dutch design collective pointed 128 light fixtures, each rated at about 7000 watts (and curiously referred to as "Spacecannons"), into a low, gray, cloudy sky between 10:45pm and 2:00am.

{Mothership, Bombardment Periphery, 2007 (Source: Mothership)}

This installation is quite a bit more dramatic, and cast against the cloudy darkened sky, the light projected tracings of the bomb's paths replicate a cinematic and eery encounter of unimaginable power and fear.

Memorial design is one of the most complicated and challenging projects a designer can take on.  So many factors both large and small scale, political and emotional have to be considered to effectively communicate the idea.

I'm personally fond of the unimposing scale of the LED's, which a visitor can experience at leisure, commemorates the fallen and celebrates the strength of the city rebuilt.  The Mothership installation is brief, illustrating the awesome experience of that day, but allows the city to remember, and move on.

+Via A456

Element Seeking Botanical Mobility

{Image by D.U.S.}

Plants are living creatures.  There's even been debates as to their protection and rights as living creatures, and in some cases, they've been granted those protections by governing law.  Minus that I think it makes for an interesting late night conversation, I'm not extremely interested in exploring the potential emotions of plants.

But, plants are living creatures, and will adapt and adjust their forms to accommodate to their environment. We've discussed this on D.U.S. before, diving into theories of mixing solar technology to create a fusion of botanical robotized organisms, de-shackled from ground and root structure and provided with greater mobility to seek out elemental necessities.  But mostly to promote healthier plant growth, and create urban space with dynamic qualities.

This mixing of nature and technology, whether through genetic manipulation or mechanical empowerment paints a spectrum of the wildest possibilities, from playful interaction and color, to haunting Sci-fi like imageries.

Researchers at New York University's interactive telecommunications program have come up with a device that allows plants to tell owners when they need water or if they've had too much via the social network blogging service Twitter.

The device is made of soil-moisture sensors that are connected to a circuit board. They measure the level of moisture, and then communicate the information to a microcontroller.  So it would seem that if we have the ability to control a computer from these sensors, then we could indeed incorporate these sensor controls into a mechanized, mobile system, then wa-la, plants are programmed to detect and move to water and sun sources when needed.

{"Roving Forest" image by Tomorrow's Thoughts Today}

This actually in a way occurs naturally.  For centuries in North America boreal forests have been migrating north following the retreat of glaciers and escaping a gradually warming climate.  Of course this migration occurred over thousands of years and took vast amounts of scientific research to uncover.

But what if we enabled plants with the robotized mobility discussed above.  While climates remained relatively calm their patterns of movement easily designed and controlled.  But what happens when resources become scarce and the necessity of life overpowers our control.  In the same way we can envision water, land, energy, and food wars in the future, what if trees with mechanic mobility were added to the mix.  Entire forests of water starved Elms, Oaks, and Maples march across the landscape in search of replenishment. Programmed to detect reserves, they seek and destroy satellite cities living off grid and there own water supplies.  Once designed for dynamic space in the urban setting, and to adapt to altered urban microclimates, the trees become just one other species desperately trying to survive a climate changing planet.

You can actually follow the Twittering plant mentioned above at: http://twitter.com/pothos

The iPhorest

{Image via iphorest, the app takes through the virtual steps of digging a hole, planting a seed, the comes the rain}

Available environmental activism has never before been so beautifully, or easily integrated into today's technology. iPhorest is an iphone application which enables even the most laziest of asses to aide in replenishing forests.

After downloading the $4.99 app, the iPhorest lets you go through the virtual act of planting a tree--digging a hole, planting a seedling, and creating rain storms by shaking the phone. After six shakes, the sun appears and a tree pops up. Every time a virtual tree is planted, The Conservation Fund plants a tree along the Gulf Coast. The amount of cash that goes from a single iPhorest purchase to the Conservation Fund varies depending on tree species and plant location, but some of your money goes directly to a brand new seedling. A world map also shows the locations of iPhoresters around the world.

{Image via iPhorest, the sun comes out and your tree has grown, view where all other trees have been planted}

iPhorest was introduced at last month's TED conference, where application sponsor Ecolife Apparel planted 2,200 trees for conference attendees.

Click here to download the app from the iTunes store.

[Via iPhorest]

Locally Available World Unseen Networks

 

An exhibition at the Architectural Association presenting a series of newly commissioned models of former Archigram member David Greene has me revisiting and reading their works.  I’m curious as to how the experimental architecture group’s work was received at the time.  It would seem to be perceived by outside architectural thinkers to be of ridiculous thought, seeing that the work even by today’s standards is somewhat progressive. Their concepts however, while a little off target have been relevant for predicting and addressing urban issues.  

David Greene foreshadows in his audio visual piece entitled ‘The World’s Last Hardware Event’ (1967) and imagines a world where man can wander, carrying his architecture in his pocket (preempting the arrival of mobile phones and memory sticks).  Ron Herron’s Walking City envisions whole cities gliding across the landscape, pausing to plug into utilities and information networks at chosen locations.  David Greene described Walking City as a “frightening expression of the current cultural condition of restlessness” or as an eager anticipation of a mobile world with a global information network in which political boundaries and cultural differences would melt away.  In know way as austere as Herron’s walking robotic imagery, but the rise in popularity and availability of prefab architecture and grid free systems allows for a mobility and lighter hand on the land, lending to a theoretical assumption that perhaps the walking city might one day in some form materialize. 

{Walking City and Instant City (Ron Herron 1964-70}

Something we’ve briefly touched on here at D.U.S. is the vision of a seamless integration of technology and nature.  We weren’t the first to think of such an idea.  In David Green's 1969 L.A.W.U.N. project he speculated that eventually it would be possible to create a 'fully serviced natural landscape', or Bottery, in which the natural world looks just as it should but is serviced by unseen networks, otherwise known as L.A.W.U.N. - Locally Available World Unseen Networks.  

Discreetly installed all across the world, Logplugs could be located by the traveller using a mobile dashboard and homing device.  Having plugged into the log and selected the required services, the traveller would pay for them using an attached credit card machine.  “The whole London or New York will be available in the world’s leafy hollows, deserts and flowered meadows”.

Greene’s vision of a fully integrated technological environment seems to foretell of the modern day invisible informational architecture known as WI-FI.  Could his “homing device” be construed as an iphone, with the inherent ability to locate signal?  A traveler, stripped from the shackles of an abundance of infrastructure can now roam freely through nature.  Could the increased development of metamaterials mask objects never intended for invisibility?  It would seem so.  Using WI-FI and personal solar packs we're able to evade miles of underground electrical lines to accommodate Greene's vision of technological connectivity in nature.

I'm currently re-reading Ian McHargs Design with Nature, and as he writes of the healing power of natural elements, the idea that nature is here, we're a part of it, we come from it, and it's positive effects can maintain psychological stability, I'm curious if our access to mobile technology negates the serenity of the wild?  Is it "nature" if unnatural objects are still present but invisible?  Are we in nature if we can be reached by our iphones?

I actually think this is a serious question if its believed or not, or to what level nature plays as a human necessity.  The way we situate are lives, design towns and cities around this belief could have lasting effects.

CityScene

{Image by Mattia Casalegno & Michael Langeder of Disturbed City}

The latest publication from the design journal Vague Terrain 13: citySCENE is a collection of works by 20 artists and scholars working with a range of mediums that include: code, the body, text, field recording, mobile technology, static and moving imagery and the application programming interface (API).  This issue focuses on 5 main topics:

Aggregation: Metacity/Multicity

Transliteration: Questioning the Language of Urban Space

Intervention: Underutilized Space as Opportunity

Framing Views: Iterative Imaging

Locative Taxonomies: Networks and Cartography

{Work by: Jun Pak and Cole Reynolds | A study of mobility in Los Angeles as it pertains to the formation of self-similar patchwork organizations of neighborhoods and subdistricts within the downtown.}

{Work by: Allison Hoffman and John Seward | An analysis of informal water delivery and distribution networks that emerge within slums in Mumbai.|

The unprecedented dynamic growth of cities which house over 50% of the world's population reaching 9 billion demand radical new approaches to cognitive mapping that interpolate socioeconomic, architectural, infrastructure, and a multitude of other complex circumstances which make up the components of the city organism.  Simply producing pie and graph charts of census data are ineffective and outdated in understanding city analysis.  These new maps presented, while seemingly complex and beautiful, filter the vastness of information and condense the information into a graphically aesthetic, obtainable form. 

{Project 360 by Franke Dresme | Psychogeographic Map}

{Above images | Mapping Rotterdam's Centre by Franke Dresme}

Part of the works find new ways of looking at cities.  Rather then over produced glorified 3D graphic renderings Franke Dresme's Project 360 meshes photos, sketches, and signs into a "collage of constructs" that focus on an urban section as a whole rather then one point of interest.  His production of psychogeographic maps is a similar representation of the more real and personal experience of traveling through the cityscape.

Olga Mink's video Urban Nature looks at city surveillance at part of the new social infrastructure, observing human nature with delayed time-lapse video suggesting that individual almost becomes non-existent and frames issues of surveillance and control in the contemporary city.

{Image by David Drury | A selection of sound points spread around the city re-mapped to the space of Botanic Park - The circular areas on the map at right represent the areas in which the recordings are heard}

Hearing There by David Drury is an interactive soundwalk along Montréal's Boulevard St. Laurent.  Participants are equipped with headphones attached to a PDA device and as they move along the street they hear binaural recordings of nearby interior spaces.  The project listens and finds greater understanding to the aural dimensions of architecture, rather then listening to headphones and our own music, which suggests that by choosing the sounds we experience while walking through a city the environment is received as a personal artifact.  It's an insulation, and by doing so secludes the traveler from immersing oneself into the intricate urban biorhythmicity.  If we're able to hear interior spaces from the exterior, the streetscape becomes more then an alignment of building facades, but a network of multilingual, multicultural, and multifaceted soundscapes. A basic awareness of our surroundings becomes amplified as we engage with this extended sense of sonic presence. The more we hear, the more we are here.

I've only touched on a few of my favorites, check out the entire issue for all more goods.