Blog Feed: (New) Babylon Reloaded

Suburbia as a way of life

Published on 2012-04-24 13:59:08

If Louis Wirth wrote his famous essay "Urbanism as a way of life", the following promo-video for the city of Redbook offers a portrayal of what we might call suburbanism. The short movie was produced in 1957 in USA and, even though we might already know a lot about the suburban dream, it is still stunning to hear, for instance: "The people who created the suburbs are young adults and the shopping centers are built in their image." On the one hand, there is a continuous stress on the idea of a do [..] > read more

The popularity of an architect

Published on 2012-04-16 00:22:04

As you may already know, Google NGram Viewer > read more

A tale of whales

Published on 2012-04-12 22:08:16

What do have in common 2011 floods in Thailand and twitter? Well... whales! I always thought they were rather peaceful and simple animals, so it was interesting to note that an info-graphic broadcasted on national Thai-TV, in order to make population aware of the dos and donts in that situation, depicted them as a sort of nasty beings, who caused the natural disaster. I came across the videos while visiting an exhibition at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. The Thai whale reminded me of [..] > read more

Coney Island

Published on 2012-01-27 10:27:53

For those of you who enjoyed Rem Koolhaas' depiction of Coney Island in Delirious New York, here you find the amusement in black and white (1940s). > read more

Car-, kitchen-, house-of-the-future

Published on 2012-01-26 03:56:08

1956. How does the future look like? I just realized that, in the same year (a coincidence?), two great previsions about the future of mankind were produced, namely a short musical titled Design for Dreaming and the Smithsons' House of the Future. On the occasion of the 1956 General Motors Motorama, held in New York and other four American cities, new car prototypes (by Corvette, Cadillac, Pontiac etc.) and a high-tech, automatic kitchen were featured in an odd musical. The dancer Tad Tad [..] > read more

Differences & similarities

Published on 2012-01-19 06:55:43

How much has China changed in 70 years? And how much has it changed in the eyes of foreigners? Enjoy contemporary Chinese streets in the first video (by Ricardo Mendialdua), and then have a look at a 1940 depiction of everyday life in Chengdu, capital of southwest Sichuan province ("People of western China"). What is interesting, is that both videos portray, on one hand the persistent "chinese-ness" of China, and on the other the big impacts of modernization, foreign technologies and influence. > read more

About Batman and other Chinese characters

Published on 2011-11-11 00:58:05

"Lonely Planed Mandarin Phrasebook". Image via amazon.com If you think about China, what comes first to your mind? Which icons represent the Country in our western collective imagination? The "Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook" summarizes our idea of "Chineseness"with: a rickshaw, a bike, taijiquan, the Forbidden City and... Rem Koolhaas' CCTV headquarters. The CCTV building (blessed by fire in 2009) can be considered iconic architecture in one of its purest forms. Skyscraper-bulimia. Shcre [..] > read more

There beneath the blue suburban skies

Published on 2011-11-09 11:53:49

400 mq villas. Photo by IES Global The annual personal income in the chinese town of Huaxi is roughly 25 times the average earnings in the country, thus being its richest town. Huaxi lies in the province of Guizhou, roughly between Nanjing and Shanghai: founded in 1961 as a rural village it counts nowadays more than 300.00 inhabitants and 80 industries, which started to flourish from mid 1980s onwards, mainly dealing with steel, metal and textile production. Map of Huaxi: in blue industri [..] > read more

Fixed'n'floating

Published on 2011-11-02 12:37:31

Here a recent project at Tongji University in collaboration with Zheng Wentao. The urban design proposal deals with aging society issues and is located in Chuansha New Town, at the outskirts of Shanghai. Fixed'n'floating > read more

On "quotation" and "translation"

Published on 2011-10-22 12:01:52

New Academy of Art, first phase, Ningbo. During some recent trips to Hangzhou and to Ningbo I had the opportunity to experience Wang Shu's architecture in closer detail (Ningbo Museum of Art, Ningbo Historic Museum, New Academy of Art among others). Wang Shu is known for his contextual approach, especially regarding local materials and culture. From What impressed me is the fact that he sometimes "quotes" building techniques, other times he seems to "translate" them. Ningbo Historic Museum [..] > read more

Biodivers/City

Published on 2011-09-25 12:01:11

Here a landscape architecture and urban design project that Eleonore Harmel and I produced last semester at TU Berlin. Theme of the studio was the "productive urban landscape" and we chose biodiversity as a theme for our project site in Köln-Ehrenfeld. Here high-quality pictures. Biodivers/city > read more

We were already, already bored

Published on 2011-04-10 16:54:04

I am sure you have not missed the last album by Arcade Fire "The suburbs" and the marvelous video by Spike Jonze "Scenes from the suburbs" that follows here: Does it really represent suburban living? Well, check-out this 2006 Canadian documentary movie about suburbia, "Radiant city": though we know already the ills of suburbia, director Gary Burns and journalist Jim Brown did a good job showing an average middle-class family in its everyday life in "Evergreen" neighborhood. You can get a pret [..] > read more

Shape is part of the meaning

Published on 2011-03-08 16:08:31

BVG. Image by haikus Every Berliner faces them hundreds of times a day, every day... Signboards are part of a city's identity, and in the most fortunate cases they reach the status of collective monuments, like the blue-white-red underground sign in London. Why is it so easy in Berlin to find your way when you travel with public transport? Who is in charge of designing a sing like this one below to show you the right direction? Well, check it out in the following video, where German typographer [..] > read more