A SELECTION OF PUBLICATIONS

PUBLICATIONS

102

“ARCHITECTURAL ALCHEMY”, THE NEW CITY READER, BUSINESS SECTION

103

HOUSING AND THE MORTGAGE CRISIS

A NETWORK ARCHITECTURE LAB PROJECT

WITH KYLE HOVENKOTTER

104

“ARCHITECTURAL ALCHEMY”, JUNK JET NO.4: STATISTICS OF MYSTICS

105

What is architecture if it is not alchemy? Take base materials: stone, wood, sand, water, metal and, following a set of cryptic instructions, impenetrable to common folk, turn it into a dwelling. No wonder then, that masonry is not just the art of constructing buildings, both rather a guardian of arcane secrets, passed down orally from time immemorial.Still, until recently, architecture itself was but a pale shadow of the arcane sciences. Setting out to transmute base metals into gold, alchemists promised not mere buildings but boundless riches, eternal youth and a universal solvent.

A NETWORK ARCHITECTURE LAB PROJECT

WITH KYLE HOVENKOTTER

HOUSING AND THE MORTGAGE CRISIS

ARCHITECTURAL ALCHEMY

106

“PERSONAL LUBRICANTS”, NEW GEOGRAPHIES 2: LANDSCAPES OF ENERGY

107

Suddenly, everything’s grim. In the face of the current global environmental and financial crisis, the future no longer promises boundless economic growth and technological innovation, but resembles a strangely familiar landscape fraught with potential danger and imminent collapse. If green shoots offer hope, only the most naïve proceed with the reckless abandon of previous years.

Global economic crises are tied to the internal contradictions of capitalism; overinvestment and overproduction produce an unsustainable bubble that eventually bursts. After a crash, overproduction typically inspires a shift in planning from the physical to the temporal. Realizing that it did not plan ahead properly, society concerns itself not with designing and producing things but rather with drawing up plans to safeguard that such crises do not recur in the future.

These images, produced using the Sim City 2000 Urban Renewal Kit—running only on iOS classic to create familiar iconic buildings— depict an example of scenario planning in which big architecture and the Bilbao effect fail.

AUDC / Network Architecture Labwith Robert Sumrell and Kazys Varnelis

PERSONAL LUBRICANTS

108

“PERSONAL LUBRICANTS”, NEW GEOGRAPHIES 2: LANDSCAPES OF ENERGY

109

SIM CITY

110

“BLACKOUT!”, THE NEW CITY READER, CITY SECTION

City Edition of the New City ReaderEdited by the Network Architecture Labwith Kazys Varnelis, Kyle Hovenkotter, Momo Araki, Brigette Borders, Alexis Burson, Daniel Payne, Pantea TehraniProject Manager: Leigha Dennis

BLACKOUT!

111

WHEAT PASTED AT THE STOREFRONT FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN NEW YORK

The Blackout Issue is an illustrated history of the 1977 power failure in New York City, telling the story of the New York Times during the blackout.

When power went off, eight copies of the next day’s edition had rolled off the presses at 220 West 43rd Street. Being on a different grid, New Jersey had not lost power, so publication shifted to a Times plant in Carlstadt, where it

normally printed sections of the Sunday issue. Editors took these eight copies and reassembled them into a new master copy, in the process shaving off half of the newspaper’s customary forty pages and adding two pages on the blackout. Since the 43rd Street plant was letterpress and the Carlstadt press had new photographic offset machines the Times used a camera at the Hackensack Record to take photographs of the paste-up for printing.

112

“BLACKOUT!”, THE NEW CITY READER, CITY SECTION

113

114

“BLACKOUT!”, THE NEW CITY READER, CITY SECTION

115

116

“THE DISTRIBUTED KITCHEN”, THE NEW CITY READER, FOOD SECTION

Although the kitchen occupies a central place in today’s houses, flats and domestic imagination, much of what we eat is prepared and cooked elsewhere. Some tasks, such as baking your morning croissant, have been outsourced for centuries. Other services, such as pre-slicing your apple snack or flash-freezing your pre made potpie, are more recent innovations. We asked eight New Yorkers to document their diet for a week, recording both what they and—more importantly—where it was made. The result is a map of the city as a distributed kitchen, a public food preparation network tied together by intersecting individual stomachs.

117

MAP AND INFOGRAPHICS

WITH WILL PRINCE AND NICOLA TWILLEY

118

“THE ARCHITECTURE OF COLLAPSE”, THE NEW CITY READER, BUSINESS SECTION

119

TOP 10 FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES IN NYC WITH LOSSES DURING HOUSING CRISIS

The economic collapse of 2008 was the product of the greatest attempt to turn architecture into capital to date. These photographs show the entrances to the ten largest finance and media corporations in New York at the time of the collapse, reminding us of the role of architecture in the crisis and how these corporations understood it.

CITIGROUP399 PARK AVENUERevenues (change from 2007): -29.4%Profits (change from 2007): -865.4%Total return to investors 2008: -75.6%

J.P. MORGAN CHASE & CO.270 PARK AVENUERevenues (change from 2007): -12.8%Profits (change from 2007): -63.5%Total return to investors 2008: -25.2%

AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP70 PINE STREETRevenues (change from 2007): -89.9%Profits (change from 2007): -1701.4%Total return to investors 2008: -97.1%

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP85 BROAD STREETRevenues (change from 2007): -39.1%Profits (change from 2007): -80.0%Total return to investors 2008: -60.3%

MORGAN STANLEY1585 BROADWAYRevenues (change from 2007): -29.2%Profits (change from 2007): -46.8Total return to investors 2008: -68.8

MERRILL LYNCH4 WORLD FINANCIAL CENTERRevenues (change from 2007): -73.9%Profits (change from 2007): N/ATotal return to investors 2008: -77.1%

note: Merrill Lynch was absorbed by Bank of America in September 2008.

LEHMAN BROTHERS HOLDINGS745 SEVENTH AVENUERevenues (change from 2007): N/AProfits (change from 2007): N/ATotal return to investors 2008: N/A

note: Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2008. This marks the largest bankruptcy proceeding in U.S. history.

METLIFE200 PARK AVENUERevenues (change from 2007): 3.6%Profits (change from 2007): -25.7%Total return to investors 2008: -42.0%

TIME WARNER1 TIME WARNER CENTERRevenues (change from 2007): 0.8%Profits (change from 2007): -405.5%Total return to investors 2008: -37.9%

AMERICAN EXPRESS200 VESEY STREETRevenues (change from 2007): -1.4%Profits (change from 2007): -32.7%Total return to investors 2008: -63.6%

THE ARCHITECTURE OF COLLAPSE

120

“THE ARCHITECTURE OF COLLAPSE”, THE NEW CITY READER, BUSINESS SECTION

121

122

“THE ARCHITECTURE OF COLLAPSE”, THE NEW CITY READER, BUSINESS SECTION

123

124

“NEW LOCAL EXPLORERS”, THE NEW CITY READER, LOCAL SECTION

As an outsider traveling to Jackson Heights, Queens, for a taste of traditional Indian food, stepping off the train at Roosevelt Avenue requires a moment to reorient to the grid and then another to absorb the neighborhood’s particular density, scale and culture. While most of the establishments between Broadway and 37th Avenue could sufficiently eclipse any amateur expectations, a quick Google search will highlight and locate the most notable restaurants, providing a sense of ease and comfort to the anxious in the face of many options.

In one example, two shops which sell similar items, Rajbhog Sweets and Raja Sweets, are adjacent to each other. The entrance to Rajbhog, which has been widely featured as a Jackson Heights destination, is decorated with articles from the New York Times, New York Magazine, Timeout New York, and Yelp!, acting as indicators of credibility for the casual or hesitant passerby. The young men behind the counter instinctively know what will be ordered, because they too have read the articles and because many others have ordered the same. Next door, at Raja Sweets, there are no Zagat or Yelp! stickers, only local and handmade signs describing the food and pricing. The interior is noticeably more informal and disorderly, yet there are considerably more customers–most seeming to be regulars dining with their coworkers or families. Meanwhile, the older women preparing the food speak just enough English to take the orders, although not without a little confusion. In both cases, to the globalized citizen with a developing palette the food is unquestionably authentic. The overall experiences, however, vary in such ways that one wonders how certain levels of online publicity and media exposure could alter authenticity as the result of an expanded network. Does Raja Sweets have a more “local” existence simply because there are more local patrons and did Rajbhog once have a similar clientele? New Methods for navigating the city have generated a new category of roving citizen: the local tourist in search of authenticity. These are tourists that are actually residents as well. With the help of easily accessible internet content, crowd-sourced ratings and reviews, top-ten lists and customized maps, knowledge of the best restaurants and bars across the city is no longer exclusive to those somehow “in the know,” that elusive status previously bestowed upon a given neighborhood’s residents. Today, all parts of the city are open for exploration. With mobile devices at hand, anyone can venture into an unfamiliar neighborhood with the basic knowledge of a local—experiencing what is perceived to be authentic after a few minutes of preliminary research. Why take the risk of trying a restaurant that might turn out disappointing when you can find one that has been inspected and approved by many others?

As mobile culture proliferates parallel to online tools for navigating the city, the relationship between locality and the particularities of place will to continue to reconcile. What is considered local may no longer be restricted to its location, but rather to a growing community of online and word-of-mouth connections. Local establishments will gain popularity, their networks expanding beyond the borders of their neighborhoods. The café down the street may not always feel so familiar, especially when the wait for coffee extends to thirty minutes. Meanwhile, like many region-specific cookbooks, the recent “New Brooklyn Cookbook” suggest that a part of this trendy food borough can be recreated at any home, anywhere. In the pursuit of a truly local authenticity, the very qualities that merit recognition are those that diminish with increased exposure, perpetuating the need to search harder. Fortunately, the methods for discovery are easy, accessible and constantly updated–because for this reason, the search must go on.

NEW LOCAL EXPLORERS

125

126

“ANOTHER GREEN WORLD”, POST SUSTAINABILITY: BLUEPRINTS FOR A GREEN PLANET

FOUR SEASONS RESTAURANT, SEAGRAMS BUILDING, NYC

Summary:

Sustainability is another way to look at economics. Both disciplines focus on how scarce resources are allocated. For economics, the problem is adjusting the system by which things are distributed. For sustainability, the problem is determining which things in the system can be allowed to disappear in order to make more valuable resources last.

Marked by the end of modernity, the 1970s experienced a widespread pessimism about the future, perhaps best embodied in a series of science fiction movies starring Charlton Heston—Soylent Green, The Planet of the Apes, and the Omega Man—depicting the world after it fallen victim to environmental devastation.

Architecture had two responses. The first, more familiar but ultimately less influential, was a nihilistic postmodernism, celebrating the death of modernity by montaging classical symbolism with modernist forms and leaving both ruptured. The second was a frank response to the situation, addressing an increasingly toxic urban environment by replicating NASA’s self-enclosed space capsules, creating sealed, conditioned

ANOTHER GREEN WORLDAUDC / Network Architecture Labwith Robert Sumrell and Kazys Varnelismodels by Leigha Dennisincluded in forthcoming Post Sustainability: Blueprints for a Green Planet

127

FORD FOUNDATION, NYC

environments that could exist anywhere. Unlike space capsules, however, these were green interiors, home to new, post-sustainable landscapes filled with living plants to make them more natural. Offices became refigured as office landscapes, bars became fern bars, and homes became colonized by spider plants, ferns, philodendrons, and avocado trees.

Like the space capsules of the Apollo program, sealed interior gardens promise us an escape from the wasteland of the city, leaving it behind for either a suburban world of self-contained corporate parks or an urban renaissance in which we are ever more divorced from the urban conditions around us. Green interiors, then offered a transitional device toward completely sealed interior environments. The novelty of working among plants waned again in the 1980s as the introduction of personal computers and online messaging boards promised a radical new form of community not based on proximity, personal interactions or shared space. Once again office life shrank to the space of a desktop, where monotony could be successfully alleviated with potted desk plants and an occasional window box. The remnants of atrium gardens and lobby plantings remind us when there was an exteriority to modernism and a need to interact as a group—a romantic notion of pre-industrial life and a pastoral provided by some higher agency looking over us. But green interiors were more than an alibi, they were always intended to fail. Their inability to sustain themselves means that we must take care of them, providing us with a memory of our relationship to the natural world. Without a system in place to encourage propagation and free growth, all but the hardiest of plants have to be constantly replaced, either with newer versions of the same species or with artificial simulations that no longer need care. In this, they reflect our own lives: as astronauts aboard Spaceship Earth, traveling the cosmos in a sealed environment as our systems slowly and inevitably fail. Locked indoors sitting at the computer, we busy ourselves sustaining the system while putting off the inevitable day of reckoning.

MODELS OF POST-SUSTAINABLE INTERIORS

128

FERN BAR

“ANOTHER GREEN WORLD”, POST SUSTAINABILITY: BLUEPRINTS FOR A GREEN PLANET