Draft Catalog #2: "Inman Square: A Visual Summary"

Originally drafted 12/21/2008:

[via catbirdseat.org]

When you play Hipster Bingo in my neighborhood, everybody wins.

Ted Kennedy

[at a 1978 Healthcare Policy Workshop, via boston.com]

I'm really going to miss Ted Kennedy. I miss him already. He was my senator for these first 27 years of my life. He was always there, and as I went from a kid watching him debate inferior Senate challengers in election years to a politically-conscious adult respecting and identifying with his dyed-in-the-wool proud liberal ideals, I developed a deep admiration for his commitment to public service and faith in the American experiment. I believe Massachussians like myself were truly spoiled by such effective representation.

As great an influence he wielded nationally, he certainly left his mark here in his home state. As he is laid to rest this weekend, his body returns to Boston, the political birthplace and cultural homeland., before being laid to rest beside his brothers at Arlington National Cemetery beside. Below is a map showing the path his procession took today through Government Center, Southie, and finally to the JFK Library in Dorchester, representing the indelible mark he left on Boston, Massachusetts, and the United States as a whole. Thank you Senator, and rest in peace.

Boston.com has a wealth of information about his life and death here, and a list of dignitaries attending his funeral Saturday.

Draft Catalog #1: Birds v. Buildings

[via treehugger.com]

Originally drafted 12/18/2008:
At Boston.com I there was an article by Bina Venkataraman about the effect of buildings [glassy sustainable skyscrapers, specifically] on birds, both migratory and otherwise. Lately it seems, however, that bird strikes involving aircraft, [see US Airways Flight 1549 back in January.] are much more in the public consciousness than bird strikes into buildings. When it comes to building strikes, the figures are staggering: over one billion birds are killed each year by accidentally flying into buildings, with migratory and often endangered bird species bearing a disproportionately high segment of the birds that fall victim to building strikes.

I could paraphrase the rest of the article, but it might make more sense to just rattle off some basics from the article about this "disagreement" between the avian population and modern architecture.

1. Annually, between 100 million (100,000,000) one billion birds (1,000,000,000) are killed by striking buildings. This figure is greater than the death toll from cats, cell phone towers and windmills combined.
   
2. The above figure represents approximately 5% of the total world bird population.
3. Bird strikes are the second leading cause of avian deaths -- the first is destruction of habitat.
   
4. When a bird strikes a building, there is a 10% survival rate. [I have to assume the survival rate for the building is nearly 100%.
5. Some species of migratory birds navigate by way of the stars: city lights can prove to disorient and cause bird strikes during their evening flight. Last year some buildings in Boston, including the John Hancock Tower (Boston's tallest skyscraper) joined a campaign to dim their evening lighting to reduce the negative effects. [Since Boston does not yet keep track of bird strike data as well as other cities such as Chicago and New York, it is unclear how effective these efforts have been.]
6. Green roofs, an effective and popular sustainable building element, are especially deleterious: they provide inviting habitats for birds that often collide into walls flying to or from them.
7. Cities such as Toronto and Chicago have adopted bird-friendly design strategies such as fritted glass, patterned glass or other visual barriers to prevent collisions.
8. The USGBC is being lobbied to include bird strike prevention methods to be incorporated into the LEED program.

It stands to reason that as we build more buildings, and more transparent buildings, that this problem will only worsen as time progresses. What we do from here is something of a mystery, but it should be obvious that however sustainable a building may be from an energy conservation standpoint, there is always room for improvement and further consideration of the greater ecosystem.


Two good articles on this topic are here:

"Fatal Reflections" by Bina Venkataraman for Boston.com
"Glass-walled buildings can mean death for birds, killing 1 to 5 percent of them a year." by Karen Knee for physorg.com

Draft Catalog

Though it seems a little foreign to me now, the platform this blog runs on, Blogger, offers a pretty easy system for bloggers to write and save quick drafts, either to later materialize into posts or to wither away in the queue. My case is very much the latter: since I hadn't posted anything since March, a lot of various things worth exploring and later writing about got posted to the draft bin. Maybe resurrecting or at least mentioning these posts will make the time elapsed between substantial posts a valuable tool of retrospective, rather than a complete waste of time. Here's a list, and hopefully I'll revisit some of them in greater depth.

Date ______Title
12/18/2008: Birds v. Buildings
12/21/2008: Inman Square: A Visual Summary
01/15/2009: The Tennessee Coal Ash Spill
01/21/2009: Solar Panels Over the Pike
01/27/2009: "It's Not All Bad, Except When It Is."
01/28/2009: Robert Campbell to Obama
02/25/2009: Peter Schubert: A Good Stimulus For Design
02/25/2009: Saving the Suburbs
02/25/2009: On the Upside, Now I Know What a Bangle-Butt Is.
03/06/2009: State Will Require Regulation of Insulation Contractors
03/06/2009: IOTA: Inland Office for Tomorrow's Architecture
03/10/2009: Studio Culture Wars
03/25/2009: Scott Van Voorhis: Really?
08/29/2009: Draft Catalog

Oh, Right!

[something excellent being assembled in May outside the GSD, now a mile from my home.]

It suddenly occured to me that I have [or, had?] a blog. Fear not, it has not disappeared completely, just gone way, way dormant. Banging out four more exams [only one test--Structural Systems--remains.] and having a pretty busy summer peppered with weddings, barbecues, and our two new kittens has rendered my free time/mental output almost nil, so consider this a placeholder for posts to come.

While many noteworthy things have gone on in the world of architecture since my last post in March, the only thing that comes to mind that I would have written about would be the ReBurbia competition held by Dwell and Inhabitat, which sought entries for revisioning the suburbs and their many non-sustainable qualities. The top entries selected by the jury were not my favorites, but all the entries in the Top 20 finalists were pretty great, and are definitely worth a look.

So here's to a more productive fall, and if anyone still reads this bad boy, I hope you all had a great summer.

You Know It's Bad When AR Becomes a Pamphlet

Yeah, so I've been busy with my face jammed into my study material lately, [as my friends and family would surely attest, I've had absolutely nothing else to say for myself for the past 9 months or so.] but I guess I needed to post something up here. Thankfully, the new issue of Architectural Record, entitled "Surviving The Recession: The Strategy Issue" arrived in the mail today. The name explains it all, and while I'm dedicated to not reading anything not ARE-related, I had an observation that didn't require reading any of the articles or features.

This month's edition of AR is damn near two-dimensional. It's only 148 pages. If I had to guess, I would say the average issue is pushing 300 pages. Mostly ads of course, [and to be fair, most industry periodicals are] but it's an especially heavy, bloated piece of print. So the dearth of advertising dollars coming in would disproportionately affect the girth of the mag. So maybe it's perfectly expected that the issue detailing the sorry state of things is physically reflected in the printed object -- It would stand to reason that the magazine is suffering as much as the industry it covers.

That's all I've got so far. But if you see a copy of Architectural Record, make sure to pick it up, feel the heft that's conspicuously absent. And enjoy. As it was well-put over at a great blog, "Why Architects Drink", it's not exactly a timely collection of advice.

Let's Build a Barn

Found an interesting passage in the Boston Society of Architects' 2008 'Homeowners Project Handbook' concerning the rights of Intern Architects, small structures...and barns.

"In Massachusetts (as in most states), these architecture-school graduates who are not yet licensed and architects from other nations not yet licensed in Massachusetts are permitted by law to design structures that are not larger than 35,000 cubic feet—and that includes almost all single-family and two-family residences as well as farm structures not designed for human habitation (barns, silos, etc.)." [page 7]

And here I was thinking that I couldn't design so much as a doghouse without a stamp...

V-Day Time Machine: Siena

Susan and I have been together for over 9 years. That isn't to say that the romance is gone, but occasions like Valentine's Day have taken on a different function, as I wrote about last year. For example, as I write this now, Susan is typing away on her own blog and we are sitting comfortably in near silence, yes, on Valentine's Day. To the outside observer, it could seem either strange or totally hilarious.

Getting to the point, it's been 5 years since I was abroad in Rome, and have been thinking back to where I was at this time in 2004. This particular weekend, for example, my fellow Italian Templars Andy, Andrew, Jess, Jay and I traveled to Siena on one of the several weekend trips to the cities and hill-towns of Lazio and Tuscany.

It was an amazing 2 days, but it stands out as the weekend where we started taking an extreme quantity of 'people-pictures', but it was also the scene of a rather epic argument/conversation about the nature of Valentine's Day, and whether or not it was worth a damn. It was really entertaining. The verdict, if I remember correctly, lay somewhere between indirect condemnation of artificial means of romantic expression, and an abiding tolerance of some of the more worthwhile aspects. Looking back, it was rather inconclusive, but as I mentioned before, good for a laugh. Here are a few artifacts from that weekend of overanalysis and overexposure. Happy Valentine's Day, whatever that means to you.

Oh, and I managed to find some photographic documentation of that great debate, at the Siena train platform, headed back to Rome:

Architecture 5¢: Opening a Dialogue

[the booth in action, image via architecture 5¢]

Seattle-based Architecture 5¢ is a strange beast. Part profession-public interface machine, part marketing device, it consists of a booth, a can (to deposit the eponymous nickel) and a man. Anyone can approach the booth, make their deposit, and hash out their design quandaries with intern architect John Arthur Morefield, principal of J. Arthur Design.

While I'm sure many architects would scoff at his fee schedule, I think it's genius. His project breaks down the financial and professional barriers that I can assume keep many people from enlisting to services of design professionals. It gets people actively engaged in the improvement of their built surroundings, [namely their homes] and it makes a case for the benefit of good, intentional design. A better-educated public which is more interested in design will benefit all.

It reminded me of the quote by Frank Gehry, describing a similar situation as the ideal interface between the public and his ideas, and to see what is pretty much an execution of that sentiment is great. [Of course, Gehry was talking about charging $25 at a mall kiosk, so we're talking about a real bargain here.]

It's hugely significant for architecture and architects in general: a profession which, in a state of constant misunderstanding with the public, is becoming less and less relevant to the very people it needs to survive and maintain an important, necessary role in society, especially small practices, which comprise the bulk of the profession.

I only wish I was anywhere near Seattle so I could see his operation in action. His website features an online version of his In the meantime, check out Architecture 5¢ if you ever find yourself in the shadow of the Space Needle.

[image via architecture 5¢]

Yep, Potholes.

Having recently moved to the city, I have a new found hatred for potholes. About a month into living in Somerville, I busted into a pothole crossing the bridge on Western Ave., and had the unique pleasure of changing a flat in the veritable no-man's-land that is the Mass Pike on a rainy December night. It could be for this reason that I think the map at Boston.com above is so great.

It's a user-editable map on the Google Maps platform, where people can mark the location of potholes, as well as a description of the pothole and other helpful advice on how to avoid it, if possible.

I don't know whether it's the fact that it uses the power of Google Maps to potentially put the screws to the Public Works Departments,or if it just feels good to let the C.H.U.D.s know we're onto their massive asphalt pilfering scheme [that's how potholes are formed, right? I was late to class that day.] It's an interesting method of visualizing the Boston metro area, by way of road hazards. It reminds me of the Strange Maps blog, which is just what it sounds like, and definitely worth checking out.

At any rate, it's good to know that people can let each other learn from their experiences and provide a warning to others headed out on the roads. Especially with potholes out there large enough to warrant their own news item.