Cognitive Infrastructures | Pratt Institute School of Architecture Degree Project Studio 2008-2009 Michael Chen & Jason Lee, critics with Gil Akos & Ronnie Parsons
A plug for a great book of amazing images by a Rome friend of mine. Can be ordered here.
“For more than twenty years, Alex MacLean’s aerial photographs have captured the evolution of the American landscape and the complex relationship between its natural and constructed environments. Over: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point by Alex S. MacLean, Introduction by Bill McKibben (Abrams; November; 336 pages; US $45; CAN $48.95) is an ambitious and visually breathtaking catalog of the extraordinary patterns and profound physical consequences brought about by natural processes and human intervention.
“Alex MacLean’s pictures are an irreplaceable document bearing testimony to the precise forces now undermining our only planet. May they help give us the insight to make the changes that we must,” writes Bill McKibben, one of the pioneers of the environmental movement, in the book’s introduction. “
Over is divided into sections covering such topics as: Atmosphere; Way of Life; Automobile Dependency; Electricity Generation; Deserts; Water Use; Sea-Level Rise; Waste and Recycling; and Urbanism. Large-scale luxury housing developments and golf courses in Nevada, massive highway interchanges in Arizona, gasoline refineries in Texas, wind turbines and solar-electricity generating systems in California, Hurricane Katrina wreckage and coastal damage in Mississippi and Louisiana, a huge municipal compost facility in Chicago, New York City’s first green building, the Hearst Tower, and widespread tract housing in the suburbs of Phoenix are among the subjects of the spectacular photographs featured.
Some of his images below (from the websiste, not the book). Motorcycle tracks on black ice, and B-52 bombers at the “Bone Yard”, the military’s aircraft dump in Tucson.
“For sale: a vast tunnel complex in central London. Former tenants include Britain’s secret service, the famous hot line between America and the Soviet Union during the cold war and 400 tons of government documents. The asking price is $7.4 million.
After years of lying unused beneath the traffic-jammed streets of the city, the tunnel complex — one mile of underground corridors and adjacent rooms — is now for sale by the BT Group, Britain’s largest phone company. BT hopes the site’s special features will attract buyers even as the property market above ground is going through its biggest downturn in decades.
Appearing more like the set of a James Bond movie than prime real estate, the complex still has a bar and two canteens, not in use, and a billiard room, not to mention functioning water and electricity supplies.”
“Here’s an educational video from Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. It’s remarkable for making very complex, interconnected issues — i.e., food security, public health, global trade, energy and geography — more readily understandable. And in under 5 minutes! Quite an amazing feat.”
MUMBAI, India – Police with loudspeakers are declaring a curfew around Mumbai’s Taj Mahal hotel, as fresh gunshots ring out from the area, in what could signal the start of an assault on gunmen who have taken hostages in the hotel.
Ambulances are driving up to the entrance to the hotel and journalists have been moved even further back from the area.
Teams of gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant, hospitals and a crowded train station late Wednesday in coordinated attacks across India’s financial capital, killing at least 82 people, taking Westerners hostage, police said.
Associated Press writers Erika Kinetz in Mumbai and Raphael G. Satter in London contributed to this report.
It may be a bit late in the semester for this to be very useful, but the maps on this site are very extensive and informative. They’ve compiled an incredible amount of information globally, I’m certain everyones’ areas of interest are mapped.
“The international system—as constructed following the Second World War—will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of nonstate actors. By 2025, the international system will be a global multipolar one with gaps in national power continuing to narrow between developed and developing countries. Concurrent with the shift in power among nation-states, the relative power of various nonstate actors—including businesses, tribes, religious organizations, and criminal networks—is increasing. The players are changing, but so too are the scope and breadth of transnational issues important for continued global prosperity. Potentially slowing global economic growth; aging populations in the developed world; growing energy, food, and water constraints; and worries about climate change will limit and diminish what will still be an historically unprecedented age of prosperity.”
The National Intelligence Council’s latest report outlines trends in technology that will shape the world to come in 2025. Among the technologies covered is the development of the Internet of Things.The Internet of things, also often referred to as “ubiquitous computing” is currently being tested and showcased in South Korea, where the technology developers admit that there are less expectations of privacy. The Internet of Things (IoT) will enable the tracking and tracing of everyday objects and people in a vast network similar to the internet. Ultimately, the “U-City” model of South Korea will be exported world-wide. PR campaigns for the U-City are already underway in the United States.
Via Wired Science: The Institute for the Future and Art Center College of Design are running Aftershock, a three-week long scenario-based game where users have to complete real-world missions following a fictional 7.8 magnitude earthquake and submit their actions to the gaming community.
“The new game is part of the largest earthquake preparedness drill ever attempted, the USGS-run Great Southern Californian Shakeout. At 10 a.m. local time Thursday, millions of Californians crawled under their desks in response to an imaginary major earthquake.
Aftershock will begin where the earthquake drill ends. It’s not so much about what to do during an earthquake, but how to survive the fallout of the disaster. By providing an intellectual exercise to imagine how bad an earthquake could be, Tester and his co-gamemasters hope that they’ll be able to not just increase awareness, but change people’s behavior.
Tester said that the game is an attempt to bring the reality of the so-called Big One home to a younger demographic by borrowing the tropes of gaming. It is one of an increasing number of serious games attempting to deal with real-world problems through collaborative online action. Last year’s World Without Oil had players imagine the world in the midst of an acute crude shortage and the IFTF’sSuperstruct asks players to craft solutions to a half-dozen near-future scenarios.”
Images and information on Thomas Traxler’s beautiful and poignant project, The Idea of a Tree. A solar powered mandrel lays up layers of string and epoxy. Depending on the intensity of solar energy collected, the texture and color saturation of the composite changes.
“this weblog explores the symbiotic relationship between creative design and the field of information visualization. It collects projects that combine creative design and information visualization in original or intriguing ways.”
In this SEED Salon, mathematician Steven Strogatz and architect Carlo Ratti suggest that there are laws of urban behavior from which the mathematician and architect can draw lessons. Feedback loops? Dynamical systems? The city of the future just might talk back.
I was listening recently to an interview with Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) on his new film Slumdog Millionaire, which takes place in Mumbai and was reminded of some stories in the news recently on slum tourism.
“Slum tourism, or “poorism,” as some call it, is catching on. From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the townships of Johannesburg to the garbage dumps of Mexico, tourists are forsaking, at least for a while, beaches and museums for crowded, dirty — and in many ways surprising — slums. When a British man named Chris Way founded Reality Tours and Travel in Mumbai two years ago, he could barely muster enough customers for one tour a day. Now, he’s running two or three a day and recently expanded to rural areas.”
This is certainly one form of economic model (and a conventional one at that) but obviously loaded as well.
