A Little Radical Cartography...

My new home superimposed on my old home.

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Studiowork: Project 3

This is the main project that we've been working on in studio this semester. We present these on Monday, and then add two more boards on implementation after the thanksgiving break.

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A few samples of work from our second assignment, which we just finished up:









And, as is featured here in my friend Siqi's iPod photo, due to a last minute room mixup, we ended up presenting in Piper Auditorium, which is the main hall at the GSD. Fancy Harvard lectern and all.

More Southie, originally uploaded by siqi.zhu.

My Flickr site has the rest of the presentation and Siqi's has more photos from the presentation as well as his team's boards (he's an amazing graphic designer).

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I just finished up these three boards for my presentation for the Jackson Square Master Plan that my class has been working on this week. The student presentations are tomorrow (I'll probably upload some pictures). I did my own plan just for fun. It's a little basic (I didn't do a lot of the research that a full plan would have needed) but I think it turned out pretty nice.

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WalkBoston Event

Thursday, March 6
4:00pm

Downtown Development Walk - WalkBoston Annual Meeting Walk
Meet: South Station Summer St. entrance under the eagle.

Walk to the Annual Meeting led by John Palmierei, new BRA Director and Kairos Shen, BRA Director of Planning. Learn how proposed projects will benefit and impact pedestrians and shape the downtown streetscape. Please RSVP to info@walkboston.org or 617-367-9255

5:30pm

WalkBoston Annual Meeting/Celebration
60 State Street, 26th floor, offices of WilmerHale

Eat-Drink-Schmooze with WalkBoston Golden Shoe Awards and Speaker Jon Orcutt, New York City DOT Senior Policy Advisor. Jon was recently named the recipient of the 2008 Civic Leadership in Transportation Award by the NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management. During his long and impactful tenures at Transportation Alternatives and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Jon won many improvements for bicycling, walking, and transit, including the restoration of bike access to the Queensboro Bridge and fairer funding for bike and pedestrian safety. Last year he joined the NYC DOT's "dream team" with Bruce Schaller, Dani Simons and other stalwarts of livable streets.

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So, awhile ago I wrote about my annoyance that the Guthrie Theater got torn down. As I see it, we are entering a pretty dangerous era for Modern Architecture. It’s just nearing the age at which it can be put on preservation lists but many people currently see it as being so common (or so ugly) that it really doesn’t matter. I think it does.

Anyway, I’m taking a grantwriting course this summer and had to pick a topic to write a fictional grant about. I decided to do a grant relating to the preservation of Boston City Hall. Well, after a bit of research, it’s come to my attention that there are no groups in Boston, and very few in the country, that are working on preservation issues relating to Modern Architecture. So here’s the deal: I’m thinking of actually starting one.



I figure that we could start by trying to learn the process using City Hall and then, if we’re successful there (or even if we aren’t) move on to identify other Modern buildings that should be put on lists and work to get them there.

I don’t want to do this alone, so I’m looking for people who are good with research, photography, graphic design, web design, handing out money, ect., who might be willing to partner with me on this. If anyone is interested, please pop me an e-mail.

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So, apparently a Boston Blog-News aggregator thingy called Universal Hub has been picking up my blog lately. Not as cool as my buddy's best Minneapolis blog of the year in 2005, but still enough to amuse me. I shall be adding a link.



I've been taking a Transportation History class this semester (actually, it probably should be called Tangents Relating to Transportation History) and have come up with several amusing anecdotes for your enjoyment:

- You know how the Green Line takes a really tight turn between Boylston and Arlington? That's because there is a cemetery above the tunnel. They wanted to disturb as few bodies as possible when they were building it. Of course, this really freaked people out, so they used to have priest come down a bless the tunnel every now and then and they even used to whitewash the walls so that ghosts wouldn't have anywhere to hide.

- America didn't start having timezones until November 18, 1883. Before that, noon was whenever the sun was directly overhead (so Noon in Manhattan was 12:01 in Brooklyn and 11:59 in Jersey City). They railroads needed a way to regulate the train schedules so they pushed it through. Of course the Christian Fundamentalists of the time had a problem (surprise, surprise) with us not using "God's Time" so it wasn't made official until 1918 (way to go guys!)

- The first year that gas prices averaged around $1 per gallon was 1973. The last year that they did was in 1999. During the same time, the cost of a new car when from about $2000 to about $18,000 and the average cost of a house went from about $40,000 to about $250,000. So if anything, gas prices are way below inflation. Let's stop whining, huh?

- During the height of the construction of the Interstate, there was a plan in California to vaporise up a mountain with 22 atomic bombs so that they wouldn't have to tunnel through. The Kennedy Administration was on board because they wanted to demonstrate the peaceful uses of atomic weapons. Of course, they still didn't really understand radiation at the time, and if they had done it, Phoenix would probably still be uninhabitable.

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The summer is always a little bit of a weird time in Boston. Since there are so many students here, a lot of the leases for apartments turn over in the summer, so neighborhoods tend to have a big change over of residents all of the sudden instead of just a little bit at a time. Every year that we've lived in Eastie (we'll be starting our 4th in August) we've noticed a big change demographically about this time of year, and this year is no different. What is a bit strange is that it seems like the commercial scene of the neighborhood is catching up to the residential: that's right, Eastie now has it's first yuppie coffee shop.

Not that I'm complaining. Coming from a cold northern city, one of my biggest complaints about Boston is the complete lack of coffee shops that aren't Dunkin' Donuts. But is it kind of funny to have a place that is always full of hipster white kids in the middle of Eastie. Especially one that names their paninis after large condo complexes. I guess for me it's just a case of the first gentrifiers complaining about everybody who comes after them. It's like when you are a punk in high school and all of the little junior high punks kind of piss you off.

The other major change in the neighborhood is the two new parks (Memorial and Bremen St.) that just opened. From a planners perspective, it's amazing to see. The parks were created from unused industrial sites, one was a rail bed and the other a parking lot if I'm not mistaken. Both of the parks were pretty much completely full from the day they opened. It's one of those cases where you can really see that there was a need in the neighborhood that has now been filled. Plus it cuts a few minutes off of my walk to work, so that's a bonus as well.

Overall, it's been a pretty interesting process to watch in East Boston, but so far, I don't feel like the new people moving into the neighborhood have been displacing many old residents (at least not ones who didn't want to go). Rents have stayed pretty stable. But I kind of feel like this year we might be hitting a tipping point where the process is going to accelerate. It'll be interesting to see what happens next.

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Inside/Outside

There is a pretty interesting article by architectural critic Philip Nobel in the newest Metropolis about the ICA in Boston (which I've also posted about before).


the ica when it was under construction

Now, obviously a critic is paid to be critical, so the article is a little down on the building. His biggest complaint seems to be about the way the building relates to its surroundings, which is a valid complaint considering the building is currently surrounding by nothing. It is a little silly though to complain about planning when there is already a plan in place and beginning construction.

Generally though, what I get from Nobel is that he's unhappy with the way the building is oriented. It turns it's back to the city, with it's harbor-side being the photogenic part and the interior most of its most interesting (architectural, philosophically) feature.

So here's my question: Is it important for every building to relate at street level to the city? Can some buildings work better (especially symbolically) relating at a skyline (or seashore) level? And, for a public building like a museum, is the interior (which, in the ICA, is an intense experience) perhaps the more important feature?

I'd love to hear ideas. For pictures of the museum check out my previous post on the subject or my flickr account.

**** I happened upon this quote today from the architect (Ricardo Scofidio) and thought it was pretty interesting:

"We began the project with the assumption that architecture would neither compete with the art nor be a neutral backdrop. It had to be a creative partner. The first step was to reconcile the paradox: the museum wanted to turn inward; the site wanted to turn the building outward. The building had to have double vision."

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Physical Politics

Before I get into the meat of what I actually wanted to post about, I have a couple of quick things that are off topic. First, J actually has gotten around to posting a couple of times about Thailand, so you should all really go and read those. Second, In the last few days, I've read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood twice, and I pretty sure it's on it's way to being my favorite book (I need to wait a couple of weeks to see how it weathers to say for sure), so everyone should really read it. Now on to what I really wanted to post about:



I've been withholding my judgement on what I think about Menino's new plan to move the City Hall to the Fort Point waterfront. Mostly, I've been waiting to see if it's just Menino saying something so it looks like he has opinions or if it's something that could actually happen. Well, a few months have passed now and it seems that people haven't forgotten about it, so I figured it's finally time for my grand opinion to come out. So here's what I think... I'm in favor of it, but only if the old building is preserved. I know what you're thinking. Most everyone who has come out in favor of moving the City Hall have done so emphatically and loudly because the city would knock down the old building, and as a student of planning in Boston I obviously have heard (and participated in) numerous bashing sessions against the Government Plaza (which has actually been named one of the worst public spaces in the world, not just the US, the world). I am not, however, one of those people who is unable to resolve the apparent contradiction between hating Modernist planning and loving Modernist architecture. They simply aren't the same thing to me.

So let me try to explain my position. First though, I have to get into some of my general beliefs about cities and architecture. I believe pretty strongly the ideology and social beliefs shape the physical environment. And that goes beyond the obvious cases like Washington, DC being a symbolic tie to classical democracy, for example. Rather, I think pretty much everything is shaped by those forces. What I really mean by this is that I think that, instead of writing the history of the city from the perspective of the forces that shaped it, I think you can "read" the physical fabric of the city and figure out the forces that constructed them.

Let me give some brief examples from Boston. If you look at the earliest colonial maps of the city, most people note how random the layout appears. Especially when you compare it to other contemporary cities, like Utopian Philadelphia or Charleston, SC, you are really struck by how strange Boston is. This probably reflects a high value on individualism in the colony (or maybe not individualism, but rather a general distrust of government). If you look a little further, you'll also notice that the city was lacking in a defined hierarchy of spaces. There are various small squares spread throughout the city, not one central one. Important buildings (churches, government ect) are scattered throughout the city. This is what I call a centrifugal city. If you look culturally at Boston now, you'll still see the social leftovers of this beginning. For example, New Englanders still really, really distrust government. Look at Christy Mihos' (from the perspective of an outsider) completely insane campaign for governor last year. The man's main point was that he was just going to do whatever the hell he wanted but at least he wasn't with a party and people still voted for him. I really don't think there is anywhere by New England where a campaign like that would get a second thought.

Another good example is the creation of the Back Bay in the early to mid nineteenth century. By that time, the randomness of Boston's streets had stopped symbolising individual opportunity and instead were understood as symbolic of the disorder of immigration and Catholicism. What the Anglo-Protestants created for themselves in the Back Bay, by comparison, is the epitome of logic, order and cleanliness. When you look at a map of Boston, you can tell by the fact that that is the only part of the city which is on a grid that there is something different about that neighborhood, both socially and spatially (especially since the Mass Pike cut through and started serving as a "city wall" to protect the Back Bay from the neighborhoods to the south: the South End and Roxbury).



So back to my point: why do I think moving the City Hall is a good idea and why do I think the old one should be preserved? I think the City Hall is also, symbolically, important to Boston's history. It represents the period of authoritarian Boston, when the West End disappeared and the city fell apart over busing and in the worst period of public housing. The building itself, with its brutallist facade raising fortress like over the windswept no-man's land of Government Plaza is a fitting memorial to all of the people who lost their homes or lived in poverty during this period. To remove it would be to give up or gloss over this period of Boston's history, and I think that's wrong. I think we need the building there to remind us what urban governance in the second half of the twentieth century was like. We need to remember Boston's dark age. My personal hope would be something like a Museum of the West End (how cool could that be, with so many residents still living who could contribute), Museum of Boston History, Museum of "Urban Renewal" or something like that. The square itself could still be redeveloped, but with building still intact.

But that doesn't mean that we need to keep the functions of our government there. To me, the movement to the waterfront makes perfect sense in our new post-industrial city. It symbolizes the democratization of space that has come with deindustrialization, namely, the fact that we've now regained the waterfront from its former industrial uses for uses of public space and recreation. Now, there are still a lot of questions that need to be addressed to make sure that the City Hall actually would be public space. For example, transit would need to improve to make sure that everyone can get there. But that's maybe for another post. For me, the idea of a waterfront City Hall perfectly fits into Boston's vision for the future, one that, hopefully, will be a whole lot more participatory then the past.

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The Institute of Contemporary Arts - Boston A Photographic Essay

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