Reflektopia @reflektopia-blog - Tumblr Blog

Forthcoming book, I am eager to read it Anthony Townsend always hit the nail on the head on smart cities. If you have to read a book on this topic this year, this will be a good option for sure.

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Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

#utopia #smart cities

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PETRIT HALILAJ

The places I’m looking for, my dear, are utopian places, they are boring and I don’t know how to make them real.

2010. Wood, iron, various materials. 13 x 11 x 8 meter circa. Installation view 6th Berlin Biennial for contemporary art, curated by Kathrin Rhomberg, Berlin, June 2010.

L.A. 2013

#utopia #history #future

"The Brutalist debate – to save or not to save – will certainly keep raging in the years to come. CLOG: BRUTALISM, with its varied accounts of Brutalism’s heartfelt promise vs its impracticality; its social consideration vs its inhumanity; its unlikely loveableness vs. its downright ugliness is a well-needed compendium that will help us put the debate, and those maligned Brutalist buildings themselves, back in context (where they certainly belong)."

#brutalism

Never Built: Los Angeles - plans from the 20s

#utopia #Los Angeles #plans #Lloyd Wright

excrescent utopia by milo ayden de luca "street light as the structure's fundamental center for support"

#urban #utopia #living space

French Visionary Architecture: Jean-Jacque Lequeu

#utopia #vision #architecture #elephant

This project will focus on one of Tallinn’s most unique regions, Soodevahe Village, which has evolved at the discretion of its creators as an illegal seasonal shanty town and agricultural area next to the airport. As it is an area of environmental and cultural value, characterised by its ‘shingle architecture’, the development and construction planned within the framework of LIFT11 will also stick to the local traditions. New public installations will be set up in Soodevahe, inviting people to come and discover this un-known area of Tallinn. A Soodevahe Centre will be established to serve as an information and meet-ing point, offering various materials which describe the historical development and future prospects of the district.

#tallin #installation #plane-watching #infrastructure #low-tech

National Infrastructure Bank some articles about the concept: Banking on the Future Time for a U.S. infrastructure bank Idea of the Day: We Need a National Infrastructure Bank

#future #bank #infrastructure #USA #urban

The Italian Pruitt–Igoe DEMOLISHING CORVIALE, GIVING SLAB-URBIA A CHANCE OF URBAN RENAISSANCE It would be an incredible opportunity to give Italian Slab-Urbia a chance to re-generation. After all the failures on 20th century town-planning, finally it seems that a new era of sustainable urbanism can begin. Corviale is a 1km long "Unité d'Habitation" built in the 1970s as example of brutalist architecture applied to social housing. It accomodates some 6,000 inhabitants. The demolition of this clear mistake in architecture, town-planning, and urban policy can lead the way to a new season in Italian architecture: URBAN RENAISSANCE to transform Slab-Urbia into true mixed-use eco-compact towns, neighborhoods and villages.

#Pruitt–Igoe #demolition #slum #sustainable urbanism #Unité d'Habitation #brutalist #Architecture

architectureofdoom

Surveillance in St. Petersburg

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The Depository of Forgotten Monuments | Vidhya Pushpanathan

The Depository helps concentrate fragments sourced from dissimilar city periods and sites. The bridge matrix includes key ‘condenser’ cores that attract dissimilar formal sectors while supporting contained, distributed and displaced programmes.

More info: Click here

ryanpanos

EXODUS, OR THE VOLUNTARY PRISONERS OF ARCHITECTURE by Rem Koolhaas vis Socks Studio

Once, a city was divided in two parts. One part became the Good Half, the other part the Bad Half.

The inhabitants of the Bad Half began to flock to the good part of the divided city, rapidly swelling into an urban exodus. If this situation had been allowed to continue forever, the population of the Good Half would have doubled, while the Bad Half would have turned into a ghost town. After all attempts to interrupt this undesirable migration had failed, the authorities of the bad part made desperate and savage use of architecture: they built a wall around the good part of the city, making it completely inaccessible to their subjects.

The Wall was a masterpiece.

Originally no more than some pathetic strings of barbed wire abruptly dropped on the imaginary line of the border, its psychological and symbolic effects were infinitely more powerful than its physical appearance. The Good Half, now glimpsed only over the forbidding obstacle from an agonizing distance, became even more irresistible. Those trapped, left behind in the gloomy Bad Half, became obsessed with vain plans for escape. Hopelessness reigned supreme on the wrong side of the Wall. As so often before in this history of mankind, architecture was the guilty instrument of despair.

architecturepost

The Crab House, a project by Ai Weiwei

On January 11, 2011, Ai Weiwei’s Crab House faced demolition for obscure reasons, including building’s right and land permits. This demolition included artist Ding Yi’s studio for the same reasons. Ai Weiwei filmed demolition in stages including discussion with local authorities, Police’s intervention. As Culture Leaks wrote, early in 2008, Ai Weiwei was invited to build a studio, named The Crab House, in Malu township, by the district government of Jiading, Shanghai as efforts in developing the town’s cultural assets.

Mary Boone Gallery, Well Designed and Built, Culture Leaks.