Category: BLDGBLOG

[Image: The original graphic for Sukkah City].

All twelve winning designs for the Sukkah City competition have now been posted, along with an article in New York magazine giving an overview of what comes next. The actual construction of each of these temporary buildings is now underway, with all twelve soon to be standing in Manhattan’s Union Square.

The competition, as New York suggests, weds “religious tradition with architectural radicalism in the timely form of short-term shelter”—and the built results go up Sunday, September 19, through the evening of Monday, September 20.

[Image: P.YGROS.C—short for “Passive Hygroscopic Curls,” as if Autechre meets the Talmud—by THEVERYMANY of Brooklyn].

I’ve included images of just four of those finalists—but, with 600 entries coming in from 43 countries, the full extent of the competition is well worth checking out over at the contest website.

[Image: Gathering by Dale Suttle, So Sugita, and Ginna Nguyen of New York City].

It’s also worth recalling the actual design guidelines, which are taken straight from rabbinical interpretations of the original sukkah form and explain many of the formal gestures you see here.

New York points out a few specifics from this “thicket of rules”:

The Talmud demands that a sukkah have at least two and a half walls, a roof that allows indwellers to see the stars and feel the rain but nevertheless stay mostly in the shade. The roof must be made of uprooted organic material—twigs or fronds, say—but no food or utensils (no chopstick thatching allowed). Mystifyingly, the rabbis of yore explicitly permitted the carcass of an elephant to be used as one of the walls. (No contestants took advantage of that option, sensing perhaps that the Department of Buildings or PETA might not concur.)

These rules have been “accumulated as a historiographical record of debates and distinctions developed by generations of scholars and theologians, that, taken together, read like something between a civic zoning code and a beat prose poem,” as competition juror Thomas de Monchaux writes in a long piece for Design Observer.

[Images: (top) Fractured Bubble by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan of Long Island City; (bottom) Shim Sukkah by tinder, tinker of Sagle, Idaho].

Diving into the architectural mythology of the sukkah, de Monchaux shows how the almost whimsically restrictive limits of what constitutes a sukkah open up a hugely various, dynamic, and complex space for contemporary design.

And there are some great designs in there; one of my favorites—which turned out to have been co-designed by one of my former students at Columbia—didn’t make the final cut, but seems worth reproducing here: a sukkah held together through a superstructure of rope that then spools back down through the portable foundations of the sukkah itself, like some geometric cross between the terrestrial and the maritime. Where masts are walls, and the floor is the deck of a grounded vessel.

[Image: XNOT by Morgan Reynolds, Ravi Raj, and John Becker of New York City].

Regrettably, I will not be in NYC to see the actual installation, but I eagerly await seeing photos and videos of the results. Feel free to leave comments here, or to email me, with images.

And congratulations to the twelve finalists! It was an exciting competition, stimulating a huge range of reactions to almost every single project, and I was thrilled to be part of the judging process.

Finally, vote for the “People’s Choice Sukkah” over at New York magazine.

[Image: The Vintage Mobile Cinema].

This is great: a fully restored mobile cinema that’s been traveling the rural roads of Devon, England, since the beginning of the summer.

“A rare 1967 mobile cinema is being restored in North Devon,” the North Devon Gazette reported last year, “and will visit schools and communities across the county next year, showing historic films unseen for many years, including old footage of the area.”

[Image: One of the originally commissioned vans].

Seven of these vans were originally commissioned by the UK’s Ministry of Technology; this one, a Bedford SB3, “is the only one of the original mobile cinemas to have survived. It was rescued by a previous owner after sitting in a field for 14 years.”

The ensuing restoration was performed by local Devonian Oliver Halls and a group of his friends.

[Images: Mobile cinemas commissioned by the UK Ministry of Technology].

If you’re in England now and hoping to check out a screening, you’ll find a schedule here, along with brief descriptions of some of the featured films.

It should not be a surprise to learn that the van has also got a Facebook page.

[Images: The Vintage Mobile Cinema].

The interior itself is the cinema, meanwhile; you actually sit inside the van and watch films from the comfort of one of its 22 upholstered seats. The equipment, as listed by the blog Home Cinema Choice, includes:

Onkyo TX-NR807 receiver
Pioneer BDP-320 Blu-ray player
Mordaunt Short Aviano 6 floorstander speakers
Mordaunt Short Alumni 9 subwoofer speaker
Mordaunt Short Alumni 5 center speaker
Mordaunt Short Alumni 3 surround speakers (x4)
Epson EH-TW3500 LCD projector

The seats themselves date from the 1930s.

[Image: Inside the Vintage Mobile Cinema].

As you can see on the van’s Facebook page, the renovation process was both extensive and very impressive—the vehicle went from a genuine wreck to road-ready. It took more than just a quick coat of paint.

[Images: The van, awaiting renovation].

Here are some shots of other vans from the original commission, as archived by the Vintage Mobile Cinema project. These have all since disappeared, presumably sold and scrapped, pushing the whole lineage nearly to extinction. Or perhaps another one will pop up someday, found in an old barn somewhere out in Cornwall.

[Images: Vintage photos of the original cinema van series].

It’s such a cool vehicle, and an amazing project: bringing films to places where public cinema might not normally reach.

Even cooler, if you’re a filmmaker, you can actually see your work screened inside this thing:

We are looking for independent film-makers work at the moment, to screen aboard the Vintage Mobile Cinema as we tour different events across the country. This is an opportunity for film-makers to have their work screened in a unique environment; a one-of-a-kind 1967 Mobile Cinema, the last survivor from a fleet of seven. The vehicle is completely unique, featuring a retro-futuristic perspex dome above the cab, and it causes heads to turn whereever it goes!

While the call-for-films specifically referred to a festival that occurred at the end of August, it seems you still have a chance; there’s contact info, in case you want to inquire.

[Image: Graphics for the cinema van].

All in all, the renovation looks superb and this particular example of flexible infrastructure—the cinema gone mobile—is an inspiring one. Perhaps this might even qualify as a soft system, in the context of Bracket 2.

[Image: Mash House by Andrew Maynard Architects; photo by Kevin Hui].

The Mash House by Andrew Maynard Architects has taken shape on its site in Australia, and, minus a forthcoming regrowth of the immediate landscape, it looks great.

[Images: Mash House by Andrew Maynard Architects; photos by Kevin Hui].

It’s more like a wooden object extruded from an industrial design seminar than what you might expect from a suburban home, and it’s also gloriously retro-colorful on the inside, with a lime green kitchen and pixellated red tiles in the bathroom.

Here are some photos.

[Images: Mash House by Andrew Maynard Architects; photos by Kevin Hui].

The interior, as I mentioned, is a very Dwell-friendly throwback, complete with seamless expanses of color, rounded edges, sliding glass walls, and retro furnishings (brought in by the homeowners).

Very little project text is available online at the moment, however, so I’m basically just describing these photographs; I’m sure you can see for yourself how the interior has been styled.

[Images: Mash House by Andrew Maynard Architects; photos by Kevin Hui].

And here are two shots of the bathroom, red tiles included.

[Images: Mash House by Andrew Maynard Architects; photos by Kevin Hui].

Finally, these process-shots taken during construction show the house in a bit more of its context—which makes it look even more interesting as an experiment in suburban form.

[Images: Mash House by Andrew Maynard Architects; photos by Kevin Hui].

I’d personally love to see more bookshelves—à la the Casa Kike or the interior of The Brain—but that’s probably only due to my own megaton collection of outdated paper-based texts…

See more at Andrew Maynard Architects.

[Image: From Robocop, via Quiet Babylon].

Architecture and technology blogger Tim Maly of Quiet Babylon fame has declared September 2010 Cyborg Month.

In the September 1960 issue of Astronautics magazine, he explains, theoreticians Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline published a short paper called “Cyborgs and Space.” As Maly points out, “Aside from an early mention in the New York Times, this is the first time the word appears in print”:

September 1960. That’s 50 years ago. To commemorate, I’ve organized a project called “50 Posts About Cyborgs.” Over the course of the month, a whole gaggle of people have agreed to put up work ruminating on the use and abuse of the term.

This, of course, includes cyborg architecture and cyborg urbanism: neurologically interactive spaces that, directly or indirectly, integrate the built environment with a living body.

On the other hand, you might be asking, what’s a cyborg?

[Image: I have no idea what this photo is; it’s saved in my harddrive under the name “Machine Boy.jpg” It’s an infant’s gas mask from WWII].

Intriguingly, at the origin of the term we find a kind of anti-architecture. The word cyborg was coined in 1960, Maly reminds us, which was “the era of the Cold War and the Space Race”:

NASA is not yet two years old. Sputnik is not yet three. Kennedy is a year away from announcing America’s commitment to putting a man on the moon. A lot of people were getting together and asking, “How can we survive for the long term in space?” One solution is architectural. Using the latest construction techniques, you can build a little bubble of earth, and plunk it down on any old alien world. We can send people off to these environments and so long as the walls don’t burst and the air doesn’t run out, they’ve got all the comforts of home. A pair of scientists, Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, had a different idea. “What if we could just live in space?” they asked, “What if instead of adapting the environment to ourselves, we adapted ourselves to the environment?” To do that, they reasoned, you need a cybernetic feedback system to maintain homeostasis unconsciously. These systems need to become a part of the organism. A cybernetic organism. A Cyborg.

The cyborg, in this specific sense, then, is an organism that does away with the need for architecture—it brings its environment along with it, in the form of artificially created internal feedback systems that adapt, on their own, to often radically changing environmental conditions.

[Image: A “zombie ant” controlled by fungal brain parasites].

So what, then, is cyborg architecture—if, in the present context, there can really be such a thing? Would it be a cybernetic network or a living geotextile? And if a house is a machine for living in, then perhaps Le Corbusier was a cyborg, too. Scaling things up, what is a cyborg city—or urban planning in the cyborg vernacular? And what about cyborg landscapes and cyborg space, in its most fluid and abstract?

Unsurprisingly, Quiet Babylon has its own take on all this; a six-part series called “Cyborgs & Architects” is worth a read: Adaptation, Astronauts and Super Villains, Nomads and Homesteaders, Mobile Structures, The Invisible Infrastructure of Cyborgs, and 6 Points on a Continuum.

Stay tuned to Maly’s monthlong experiment to see what sorts of question, answers, and scenarios pop up—and consider participating yourself, simply by writing a cyborg-themed blog post. If you do, get in touch with Quiet Babylon and join the conversation. After all, there’s no reason “50 Posts About Cyborgs” can’t become 62 posts, or 75…

Israeli novelist Assaf Gavron’s recent book Hydromania has yet to appear in English, as far as I can tell, but I’d love to read it when it does.

[Image: The German cover of Hydromania by Assaf Gavron].

Set in a drought-stricken world “several decades into the future,” run by “water corporations from China, Japan and the Ukraine,” it follows the science fictionalized path of a “maverick water engineer” who has developed an illegal black-market technology for purifying rain water. As the website Qantara explains:

The constantly thirsty people drink “Ohiya Water” or “Gobogobo Water,” which they must buy from the companies. The private storage of water is not permitted and the ban is strictly enforced by means of an all-seeing surveillance system.

Further, the political geography of the region has been irrevocably changed:

Israeli territory has been reduced to a narrow strip bordering the Mediterranean Sea and to two major cities, one of which, Tiberias, is destroyed through Palestinian military action in the course of the novel. Israel is thus left with only its capital, Caesarea, and some surrounding districts. Countless Israelis are reduced to refugee status: the poorer living in primitive conditions aboard wrecked destroyers off the coast, whilst the better-off inhabit floating residential areas with appealing names such as “Ocean 8.”

The book’s speculative fictionalization of future water politics won the Geffen Prize in 2009, and has already been published in Hebrew and German, with a Dutch translation forthcoming next year. Anyone out there read it yet? Is it good?

[Image: A future site for Austin + Mergold’s House-In-A-Can].

Architects Austin + Mergold have a proposal for how to reuse agricultural silos and other circular structures of the U.S. farm belt: it’s what they call A-House-In-A-Can.

Pitched for a farm in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, the project comes complete with a faux-Craiglist hard sell: “36-foot in diameter American grain dryer with 2000 SF single family starter home inside. Instantly assembled off-the-shelf 14 GA galvanized corrugated steel exterior a 2000 SF developer house inside. Optional greenhouse. Buy 5 get one free!!!”

The images are all you really need to see how it would work: an internal shell is slipped inside the grain silo, services are established shortly thereafter, and the client can then schedule a move-in date. In some ways, I’m reminded of Zecc Architecten’s project for a converted water tower in Holland, or even Piercy Conner’s Martello Tower Y renovation.

[Images: A-House-In-A-Can by Austin + Mergold].

And while these study-models could use a bit more detail, in concept, they’re both delightfully absurd and inspiring.

[Images: A-House-In-A-Can by Austin + Mergold].

A thesis presentation performed as a series of metal cans extruded outward into models of inhabitable architecture… Cinema-In-A-Can. Library-In-A-Can. Gym-In-A-Can. Dome-In-A-Can Republic.

(Perviously: Austin + Mergold’s Fortifications Tour).

[Image: Jack Whitten prepping octopi on the rocky coast; photo via Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Quarterly].

Jack Whitten is an octopus-hunter—or octopus fisherman, we might say, both more and less accurately. This activity, which he performs without the use of air tanks, requires a surprisingly niche architectural knowledge: “Millions of years ago,” Whitten writes, “the octopus had a shell, but slowly they lost it through the evolutionary process. Since then, the octopus is always looking for a home. They occupy the abandoned shells of other sea creatures, cans and car tires or make their own houses, which I call ‘octopus architecture.'”

[Image: Jack Whitten prepping octopi on the rocky coast; photo via Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Quarterly].

The trick, Whitten says, is to lure the octopus out of its site of undersea domesticity using nothing but a white handkerchief; after all, “they are addicted to the color white like a bull is to red. They can’t control themselves. Thus, I always keep a white handkerchief tucked into my wetsuit, which I use to seduce them from their lair.”

Until that point, however, the hunt is as much about stalking architectural signs across the seafloor as it is about locating an animal’s body:

When hunting for octopus, one must learn to recognize the morphology of the bottom of the sea. Octopus prefer a specific setting identifiable by a certain quality of stones, sand and plant life. Octopus architecture is unique, constructed with stones, shells, wood, bits of sea glass or anything available for building a nest. And of course, they prefer white stones. The nest is always semicircular and built at the base of a large rock, which serves as an anchor. They burrow a tunnel deep beneath the rock, usually with an exit for escape if attacked. The semicircular structure is built five, six or eight levels of rock high depending on the size of the octopus. It is masonry without mortar: closely fitted, tight and fortified. Most of the time I only see the architecture.

The rest of the process involves, as you might imagine, handheld weaponry and some local cooking practices—but the predatory detection of animals by means of their lairs adds an intriguing chapter to the story of architectural history.

(Thanks to Alexis Madrigal for sending this link long ago!)