communitas

yet another visual landscape

[socialistcity]

Anthropocene Curriculum

The Age of Humankind asks for new ways to produce and disseminate knowledge. The Anthropocene Curriculum addresses that need by bringing together researchers, academics, artists, and civil actors from around the world to form a dynamic body of knowledge that is both experimental and self-reflexive. This collaborative educational project initiated by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science goes beyond disciplinary boundaries and established educational formats to better describe, understand, and thus meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

[socialistcity]

Anthropocene Lectures

The Anthropocene – the geological epoch of humans – has established itself as a key concept within a wider scientific and social discourse. In the midst of the dramatic and destabilizing changes wrought by it, new potential for human action upon the Earth demand exploration, asking: Which forms of cooperation could arise from a new awareness of the human role in interlacing nature and technology?

[socialistcity]

Noosphere, Vladimir Vernadsky

[socialistcity]

Now, in the months following the attacks, it is as if we are living in the unique time between a traumatic event and its symbolic impact, as in those brief moments after we have been deeply cut, before the full extent of the pain strikes us.

Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2002, p 443

[drawingarchitecture]

Kisho Kurokawa, Floating City, Kasumigaura.

[socialistcity]

David Cronenberg

Crash, 1996

[socialistcity]

Fritz Kahn

[socialistcity]

Michael Heizer

[socialistcity]

Michael Heizer

[socialistcity]

Mississippian Mounds 

[socialistcity]

Lincoln County, Nevada

[socialistcity]

Mesoamerican Ball Courts

[ummhello]

Casablanca Honeycomb Housing

[the-dark-city]

Madam Satan (1930) boarding the zepplin

[socialistcity]

Such a space is not to be found where priority is placed on function. The architect must rely on insight instead. Moreover purity of space and form conducive to meditation must be based on a natural distillation of the traditional context of land, a formal sensibility filled with the architect's fervent prayer and freedom of ideas.

Itami Jun, “The Insight of the Architect”

[temporaldisjunctures]

Hulme Crescents, Manchester, were four massive deck-access blocks bulit in 1972 to house 13,000 people. At the time the Crescents were Europe’s largest social housing project, but soon became famous as one of Britain’s worst housing schemes. Just two years after completion, Manchester City Council deemes the Crescents unsuitable for families, due to a series of accidents involving children falling from balconies with serious design flaws. Two new dual carriageways cut the estate off from the rest of the city, leaving residents isolated and with no public transport. With the energy crisis of 1973, the pioneering underfloor heating became too expensive for tenants to use. No deinfestation had been carried out on the subsoil prior to construction, so the flats were plagued with cockroaches and mice, which thrived in the heating ducts from early on. Police refused to patrol the decks, leaving residents exposed to muggings. By 1975, 93% of residents said they wanted to be rehoused. Lacking sufficient funds to demolish the estate, in 1984, Manchester City Council effectively abandoned the Crescents and stopped charging rents. The flats were occupied by squatters, and became the centre of the North West’s anarchist and punk scene. Unchecked by the council, the new residents modified the buildings. Three flats were knocked together to form The Kitchen nightclub and the estate gained its own art house cinema. The ‘lack of ownership of communal spaces’ that had been initially complained of, proved in the end to be a factor that encouraged a new sense of possibility. The Crescents were demolished by Manchester City Council in 1992.

[amb-architect-blog]

http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/gone/crescents.html

http://cheapandplastique.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/hulme-crescents/

http://www.mancky.co.uk/?p=1978

[everythinggoodluck-blog]

Li Han/ Atelier 11