Hilary Sample, partner at mos and one of our Verb Crisis contributors has an interview featured on the Where blog. Her research on global health crises and their effect on urban design strategies is as crucial and timely as ever in the context of the ongoing H1N1 (formerly known as Swine Flu) “imminent pandemic” affair.  The piece that appeared in Crisis, “The Biomed City” is a short and intriguing essay on the logic and the dynamics behind the surge of what could well be a new urban paradigm. Click here to download it.

* Photo by Flickr user amegally

Presentation of Geologics at RAS

Things have been a bit slow here in terms of posting, but it’s only because so much is happening in the analog world! We expect the blog to pick up some steam soon enough, though. In the meantime, please drop by our cousin blog at RAS. They have all sorts of good stuff, including promotions and events coverage.

For example, you can find some snapshots of last night’s presentation of Vicente Guallart’s brand new book, Geologics (published by Actar) where he “examines the technological, social and cultural changes in our information society for new urban building.” Which is to say practically everything.

Guallart recently declared that we are in the midst of a full-fledged spatial shift; that after sharpening the divide between urban and rural environments throughout the twentieth century, it is now time to “live differently, at another speed, and after expelling nature from cities we are now introducing networks into nature.” He also mentioned that architects have to stop worrying about building buildings and start worrying about building entire, complex habitats.

The full Q&A with the author is available on-line at El Periódico (sorry, only en català or en español. But don’t worry, you can find plenty of good reads on the subject of Guallart and the “re-naturalization” of cities elsewhere. And you can always buy the book, of course!)

Vicente Guallart at RAS

Aside from the economic turmoil that is hitting everyone, print is facing its own set of challenges—particularly in terms of the digital onslaught. Both publishing and architecture are caught in a steep sort of crisis mode, a key moment of redefinition. Within this context, again we’ve been invited to share a bit of our experience and discuss with others. This time we’re heading to Paris, invited by Cédric Libert—the main man behind the Espèces d’Architect initiative, a “cultural operation” commisioned by Wallonie-Bruxelles that intends to explore “the vitality and renewal of the current architectural scene”—who has set up a series of conferences and roundtables on the subject of architecture and publishing. With a hint of jocosity, the debates have been titled “Béton & Garamond“. The talks will be held at the École Spécial d’Architecture this Thursday and Friday. You can download the program here.

We’ve received a gracious invitation from the Núcelo de Arquitectura (NAUL) of the Lusíada University in Lisbon to join them in a series of debates on the subject of publishing and architecture. The discussion will take place on Thurday, March 12, at 6 p.m., focusing on print media. Luís Santiago Baptista of arq|a magazine will also be there. Save the date.

Download the conference flyer here

* photo by Robert Sumrell

The Infrastructural City is causing something of a stir after being featured in the Los Angeles Times last Sunday. Taking it as a point of departure for his latest article, the paper’s prominent architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, noted the book’s timeliness (“[arriving] on shelves brimming with so much political and cultural currency”) in the context of the growing concerns over the state of infrastructure in the United States, present and future, particularly in terms of the stimulus proposals that will concentrate government efforts against economic fallout:

In recent weeks, as the details of the stimulus package were being hammered out in Congress, the same few questions moved near the top of the political agenda not just in Washington but in cities around the country: In 2009, what is infrastructure, exactly? Is it just roads, bridges, train lines and tunnels — the muscle and bone of the city — or can we update that New Deal-era definition to include a greener, more flexible or even purely digital set of urban initiatives? If so, how best to integrate that new, “soft” infrastructure with the hard variety?

Mr. Hawthorne briefly praises the book for staying away from the usual readings of L.A. as an abstract urban narrative, offering “a doggedly detailed guide to Los Angeles as a physical thing” instead. Soon enough, though, he switches to what really concerns him: the relationship between architecture and infrastructure. Rather than providing a standard review, the piece takes the book as a springboard for discussion. The critic’s main concern is pretty clear: will infrastructure save architecture from itself?

Infrastructure captured the public imagination” in the 1930s and ’40s, Varnelis writes. “Americans came to accept modernism through bridges and dams before they accepted it in buildings.” It’s tempting to imagine the same process unfolding again…What if we asked our most innovative architects to collaborate on plans to build bus stops, subway stations, neo-Victory Gardens and elementary schools?…Maybe there’s room in this new political climate for a productive hybrid from teams of talented architects and engineers: The conspicuously and efficiently designed but anonymous piece of the city, the infrastructural masterpiece that carries no signature.

*photo by Kazys Varnelis

Kazys, unsurprisingly, is less optimistic. In a somewhat biting reply to Mr. Hawthorne’s piece posted on his blog the same day it hit the stands, the editor of The Infrastructural City draws a thick line between the critic’s concerns and his own.  Dreading the thought of hyperstylized energy farms or subway stations or things of this sort, Varnelis stands by the premises of the book: “Infrastructure continued to rise in the public eye, in large part because, as our book points out, it is in a state of constant failure.” He even ventures the thought that the U.S. might be better off without a major infrastructural rehaul (especially one ushered by architects), considering the possibility of it leading to the next bubble n’ burst economic cycle. Kazys doesn’t want to see architecture saved, but significantly redefined; and he certainly doesn’t see infrastructure as the saving grace. As John Southern keenly points out in his own review on Tropolism, infrastructure itself, as a concept and as a built reality, is going through a series of crises of its own.

In any case, the debate is on—it’s actually just starting to get good. While the terms of the controversy and (and of the possible solutions) are still shaping themselves, the only certainty is that the issue of infrastructure will remain crucial, one way or the other.

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Check this other review of the book at Archidose (John Hill marks it as *a favorite*)

photo by Interboro Partners

Cities have typically been the sitting duck for dystopians. We’re constantly fed with scenes of overcrowding, squalor, violence, pollution, and decay associated to metropolitan life. Recently, though, it seems cities are passing the baton to the suburbs. Not only the nuanced portrayals of darkness lurking behind the picket fences and the heavy curtains with frills (from David Lynch to Desperate Housewives), but outright dire depictions of the things to come (wildcats taking over backyards, and all).

Now planners, architects, analysts and critics are catching up. A fascinating article appeared in The Atlantic a few months ago, asking if the suburbs were destined to become the next slum. Allison Arieff, former editor of Dwell magazine, has posed a similarly challenging question at her New York Times blog, By Design: “What will save the suburbs?”

The current combo of economic turmoil, mortgage crisis, foreclosure and on-again, off-again energy scares has brought an incredible amount of instability and uncertainty to supposedly safe and sedate middle-class suburbia. Abandoned houses, mounting crime rates and blight are just part of the panorama. What will the near future bring? Boarded-up houses and overgrown lawns? Poverty and razed lots?

What will, as Ms. Arieff asks, save the suburbs from this scary and seemingly inescapable fate? Well, the suburbs themselves, of course. More than big “rescue” projects and showy rebuilding schemes, we can expect a series of slow, homegrown shifts to reshape and redefine life in the suburbs. In fact, these changes are already well under way.

photo courtesy of Teddy Cruz

Teddy Cruz, for example, has been tracking the significant mutation of first-ring, whitebread suburbs in Southern California into dynamic, dense and diverse immigrant neighborhoods. Interboro Partners have chartered what they call an “unspectacular” rebirth in “suburbanized” downtown Detroit, where homeowners occupy empty neighboring lots and create a unique spatial, economic and social fabric that is far from the loud, apocalyptic visions of a city doomed and “returning to nature”.

Both Teddy and the team at Interboro contributed with original interviews and rich background materials for their respective features in Verb Crisis. You don’t need a crystal ball or a sci-fi flick or a futurist forecast to know what the future of suburbs will look like. The future of suburbs is already undwinding.

The base for this research is Alejandro Zaera-Polo’s current investigation presented in different formats under the common title of “The Politics of the Envelope”. See his lecture at the Berlage Institute and his texts published in Volume no. 17 and Log no. 13/14.

Chicago is all the rage: first Obama, and now Blair Kamin. The Tribune’s architecture critic just put out a biting little piece confirming that “icon architecture is no longer the issue du jour. it’s sustainability—and survival”. And infrastructure, of course.

We certainly didn’t get to this point out of the blue. For years now, a number of people within architecture and related fields have stayed away from the shiny newness of starchitecture, choosing instead to delve into the oversights and obscurities of our everyday built environments and realities.

Kazys Varnelis is probably one of the most constant and eloquent of these (now spreading) voices. In the midst of things, the latest book he edited and we published, The Infrastructural City, is a real knockout.

Check out the reviews of the book at Tropolism and We Make Money Not Art.

* photo by Lane Barden.

In a short text-cum-fact sheet on housing in the Iberian Peninsula that I contributed last summer to the catalogue of the Collectif / Collective exhibition at arc en reve I wondered how a stagnated and oversupplied market would ever be receptive to new developments in (housing_iberia.pdf). As the peripheries of most Spanish cities today demonstrate, the bubble hasn’t offered much room for experimentation, and our lives and those of future generations will unfortunately be conditioned by this short-sighted investment.

(Hopeful news arrive again from Copenhagen, where BIG’s Big House project is going up. Hope will further be communicated in the Yes is More exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre next month, and the book that will be published consecutively by Actar.)