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Buildings that Speak

Architecture can do many things; it can inspire, it can awe, it and repulse and annoy, architecture, like people, can be multi-faceted. From a simple one-story home to a sky scraper, architecture is anything and everything that we can make of it. Whether it is your own house, your office building, or a public library, we all interact differently with different buildings. A recent project by Bottega Studio Architetti and Giocosa Palitto Architetti has allowed for a new level of interaction.

This architecture slash art project has come into being in Italy, in areas that are less privileged in order to re-imagine the space and to step up interaction between people and their environment.

Not quite the same as some conventional art, but still with a similar focus. While graffiti serves the purpose of catching attention in a picturesque fashion, this is more of a medium for delivering a message. This particular project, Parma #33, broadcasts via balconies the words, “Uno Odo, Due Sento, Tre Ascolto” or One I Hear, Two I Heed, Three I Listen, I Got It.

It is an interesting way to get the people out on the street and the people who live in the area more involved in the building, more invested. Some people write or paint to get their message out there, but this in-between method works just as well and reaches people personally because it is their neighborhood or home that is the focus of this idea. This transformation of the everyday into something more allows for greater interaction with the area, a dialogue between the people and the structure.

Pictures and story from here.

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Reinvented Ad Space

Last night I was driving back from Indy with a friend and I happened to start paying attention to the billboards that lined the highway. Needless to say there were plenty of them, all advertising different things ranging from McDonalds to health insurance and even one about the bad situation that is the economy right now. I was rather surprised today when I came across a story today that was all about billboards and the space that they inhabit in our lives. The story follows a recent project by artist Karyn Olivier to reinvent the Houston skyline by repurposing the billboards around Houston.

Oliver has replaced the glaring advertisements with what should already be there; by taking out the ads and replacing them with pictures of what drivers would see if the billboards weren’t there Oliver has brought back a scenic view for travelers. It is an interesting concept, because I know that when I drive I would rather see the sky or trees or just about anything rather than yet another ad about car insurance. Billboards are something that we are all used to; we have grown up with them, and like an annoying older sibling they are always there to look down on us and tell us how we’re wrong or what to do. Maybe that is a pessimistic view of billboards; although, they can also be helpful, say if you’re hungry or need a gas station. Oliver has reinvented the billboard; she has taken something that everybody is familiar with and transformed it into something else. But like all things, this too has its time, and the project officially ends on November 22; apparently it costs quite a bit of money to maintain ad space that big. The point is well taken, though, how often do we lose sight of things in our world because we cover them up with white noise? Hopefully others will take a cue from Karyn Oliver and in the future we will have more projects like this to look forward to.

Check out the full story here.

Pictures from Karyn Oliver's Blogspot.

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The Distant Stage and Immediate Audience: Public Standards

Recently, while discussing psychogeography and situationists with colleagues, I remembered this video of Jason Mraz singing, "Live High." I then read Guy Debord's short chapter and critique of urban psychogeography. I find that some of what Debord discusses is a bit radical, however, much of it rings true in this video. I am most interested in what doesn't work though. Debord discusses creating different experiences in our everyday lives. He also discusses what these changes do to publics by breaking up the mundane nature of our understanding of a city (giving the example of a friend navigating a city with a map of London).

Mraz creates a new use for the space that he occupies. Where most street performers might remain stationary, Mraz moves about. Where people walk, travel to work, and mingle Mraz performs. But look at how the people react to Mraz's alteration of the space's purpose. They don't react. Debord says that taking art and movement and innovative techniques to recreate space and interpolate publics in to the situationist's understanding of how a city is to be used will change publics the Mraz video demonstrates that people often resist this interpolation. They ignore Mraz and the cameraman.

But what does this do for the audience that receives Mraz's video. The publics in the video resist his use of space and maintain their own reality. Mraz is in a place yet his audience isn't necessarily the public that occupies it. Mraz creates a broad sense of psychogeography by allowing the video audience to witness the repurposing of space as a stage and performance area. How does this work? How is the distant audience more influenced by the event and spectacle than the immediate public? How does immediate public's reaction to the disruption of everydayness differ from that of a more distant audience.

Social norms often govern how people associate themselves. If one person and a friend would have stopped more would have gathered. If one person is willing to break a norm more will come. How can we use this to encourage new understandings of the places and spaces which we occupy?

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Building for Change

Talk about Repurposed! When looking at an old out of service school bus most people wouldn’t see a potential bust stop shelter, but that is what artist Christopher Fennell has done here. By resurrecting these old scrap heaps, Fennell has recycled in an unorthodox, but rather amazing way.

During our exploration of public spaces we have seen many different ways that people have transformed the areas around them in creative ways, using graffiti or public art and sculpture to repurpose and recreate the space around them. Fennell specializes in using materials that have been thrown out, things considered unusable and unwanted by society, and transforms them into something new. Looking at innovative ideas like this I can’t help but feel that we should be seeing more things like this in our cities and towns. A little creativity can go a long way for changing our world.

Photos from The Design Blog.

Check out more on Christopher Fennell Here.

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Bars and Cells

Technology is creating spaces around us. More specifically we are redefining the usability of spaces by their ability to support cellular phones, wifi, and 3G networks. An entire discourse is being created around brands and their spaces.

These spaces and our access to them enable communication and the sharing of information only if we are situated in places which support the communication. People then begin to define the world around them by the number of bars they have or connection availability. Dead zones are frequented less and places where the connection is above average are sought out.

Each brand or type of device that utilizes these technologies creates a specific public. Many companies are offering incentives to their consumers/publics masking the penalties of communicating with someone outside their network which puts an odd twist in a concept of space and publics. Before we make a call or connect to the network we have to think, are they in network? Is there a charge? Our communicative realities are being shaped by the spaces and rhetorics which are a part of the technologies we use.

The ability for communication across regions. Doreen Massey discusses this in her article A Global Sense of Place. These networks allow publics to connect over distances yet certain people or publics are excluded by default because of their lack of connectivity. Businesses, individuals, and entire nations are being impacted by their access to these technologies.

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No Pacemaker

"Urban critics since Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs have known that cities have lives of their own, with neighborhoods clustering into place without any Robert Moses figure dictating the plan from above."

Steven Johnson, Emergence

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Performance Spaces

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Google voice

Voicemail and I have had a love hate relationship since the purchase of my first cell phone in 2004; however, this week it all changed as a friend passed along a link to the Google Voice Blog. The service is free and by requesting an invite you can have it too.

It is incredible that since the purchase of my first phone I have become attached to the device to the point that I feel guilty for turning my phone off rather than silencing it during my classes for fear of forgetting to turn it back on. I like my cell phone, but let’s be honest sometimes I just need a break. In fact, I am far more of an email addict than a phone addict. This is why I have been so annoyed by voicemail up to this point. I knew that I was annoyed, but until discovering Google voice did not realize that it was due to a lack of options and new technology. The automated voice spoke so slow that I found myself wasting time trying to get caught up on voicemails. That is not the case now.

My voicemail has transcended spaces and can even transcend publics as I can share voicemails via email, embed them on a webpage, and download them later. Talk about the perfect means for saving and sharing voicemails. I can now access my voicemail as I would an email. I have set up the service to text me an alert message when I receive a voicemail; I opted out of having the voicemails transcribed and sent to me via text, simply because I prefer email. However, by logging into Google voice, I can view my messages just as I would an email. Rather than listening to voices, I prefer to read the messages or do both. Of course I can always listen to them through the program too. There is no wait time, and I love the service because it is visual unlike traditional voicemail. I can even jump over to my Gmail to take care of the content left in voicemails if need be or continue working and return to the inbox of voicemails later. The ability of voicemail to now transcend spaces and create new discourse by going from voice to text is fascinating. Quite simply, Google has developed the means once again to repurpose the internet for personal communication purposes.

 

Since 2004 when my parents purchased me the latest and greatest cell phone, I have seen the influence of discourse, language in use via cell phone, create spaces in technology. Take for instance picture sending, video sharing, text messaging, not to mention the capabilities of the iPhone. However, looking specifically at voicemail, all sorts of adaptations for particular carriers such as visual voicemail for iPhone users exist,  but unfortunately my simple LG Verizon flip phone does not offer such services. I now however have found the perfect solution in Google voice.

I’m still learning and you should too! Check it out.

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The "God view":...where everything interacts

   

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The_God_view...where_everythin.zip (388 KB)

This summer, I traveled to St. Louis and I visited the Gateway Arch, which has a beautiful museum . But the main attraction is the view from its very top. Standing about 630 feet tall, the view is amazing to say the very least.

On one side of the Gateway Arch is the amazing view of the city, with high-rise buildings, roads, and bridges intertwined; it's a distinctive sight that is highlighted by the St. Louis Cardinals Stadium.

On the other side sits possibly the only thing you cannot view in its entirety from the top, the Mississippi River--2,320 miles in length--the second largest river in the United States. Seemingly the whole world around you shrinks and you get close to possessing what I term the “God view.”

The “God view” is the ultimate unreachable perception of the world in its entirety, with everything and anything being in sight. The idea of the "God view" came to me as I stood on the ninth floor of Teacher’s College (TC), a building on the BSU campus. I looked out the windows on the side of the building, with a view down N. McKinley Avenue.

I immediately noticed the vast difference from the experiences I have during my everyday walks on campus. I saw everything beneath me in its entirety and not just in little tidbits. For instance, you see the Atrium as it relates to the sidewalks, the sidewalks as they relate to the streets, the streets as they relate to the people, the people as they relate to the cars--as the Atrium relates to the library, as the library relates to the Bell Tower, and the interrelationship never ends.

Everything felt like it had a more defined relationship, and I began to realize how much the environment and surroundings affect our being and our movement. My one question remains what is the ultimate reachable “God view”?

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Monster Mash, Indianapolis

Have you ever heard of alleycats? Do you have a bike? Any plans on Halloween? No? I have an idea for you...

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