Urban Actions

After viewing the "Streets belong to all of us!" exhibition organized by the Paris-based IVM at the Faculty of Architecture at University of Toronto, I was mostly struck by a single image. Denis Darzacq's photographs feature agile figures in mid-leap, or mid-fall, or even mid-flight. The space between this figure and their urban context even more charged by the fact that they are not in contact with it in any way. Levitating above the hardscape, each figure remains poised for a graceful fall. The ground appears all the more hard with the suggestion of impact.





In a similar manner but with context erased Robert Longo's Men in the Cities series documents well-dressed figures in a contorted position, caught mid-dance or mid-reflex of some kind, ties a-flailing.



Bernard Tschumi's 1978 advertisement for Architecture featured a figure in mid-fall with architecture its background. This was the site of a murder. Architecture was its first witness. Tschumi writes that "Architecture is defined as much by the actions it witnesses as much as by the enclosure of its walls."

Food City

[The increase of grain prices and the decrease of crop yields as displayed in a recent feature in the Economist.]
With the recent food crisis, one need look no further than Vancouver ... and Cuba for responses.

Vancouver's Olympic Village is set to include urban agriculture; rainwater management systems; green roofs; and neighbourhood energy system. The urban agriculture prompted an in depth report outlining urban agriculture and its trajectory. Within this document is a useful definition of urban agriculture:

The term urban agriculture, as it is commonly used, refers to any agricultural production that takes place within the urban and peri-urban region. This could include the growing of food (vegetables, grains, mushrooms, even meat and dairy products), medicinal plants, herbs, and ornamental plants. It includes a diverse array of techniques and approaches ranging from backyard growing to large-scale urban market gardening, hydroponic greenhouses and aquaculture. It is not just community gardening although this is an important component in many cities. Food is of paramount importance because of its primary contribution to survival, health, culture and impact on the environment. This study primarily focuses on food rather than some of the other agricultural/horticultural products.
The study of urban agriculture is often focused on food production within a City, which predominantly means the growing of soft fruits, salad crops, herbs and vegetables. However, in a high-density community like SEFC some of the opportunities for food production are limited compared with neighbourhoods with a higher proportion of open space. The potential for addressing the issues of sustainability is likely to be greatly enhanced by examining other aspects of the food system such as how and where food is processed, and the manner in which it is distributed...

Get the Southeast False Creek Urban Agriculture (207 page!) report as a full PDF here.

Cuba's story is more complex. It developed the organoponicos, organic urban farms, in the 1990s as a response to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Cuba's intensive monoculture approach to farming was dependent upon Soviet agrochemicals. Cuba was heavily dependent on imports and this event threatened food security. To gain greater independence, the government launched a nationwide organic urban agriculture movement. Organoponicos made Cuba one of the only countries to develop state-sponsored urban farms.

[A downtown Havana organoponico.]

This practice has also been taken up in Caracas since Hugo Chavez came into power in 1999. Chavez promotes urban agriculture as a form of 'endogenous development.' An inward-looking self-sufficiency.

[Organoponico Bolivar I garden occupies 1.2 acres in the center of Caracas.]

related: Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates

Cubiclopia

In a 2006 article on the decline of the cubicle, Julie Schlosser, reminds us of Robert Propst's earnest regret at having invented the cubicled workspace. Propst, just before his death in 2000, called the modern cubicled office "monolithic insanity."

David Franz in the New Atlantis picks up on this critique citing the quick steady decline of the cubicle from its social utopian origins. Franz writes: “The cubicle, once a cutting edge statement of corporate identity, has become an embarrassment, even for its makers.” Maybe it was simply that utopia was not for those that worked in the cubicles but more for those that supervised those that worked in the cubicles. From the outside, it looked as though everyone had their piece of the office, yet the openness of it meant that they were unified. It is a human hive. Linked together yet each worker maintains some perceived privacy.


[Johnson Wax Headquarters' Great Workroom]
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Headquarters (1936-39) presents a central space containing a sea of secretaries while administrators occupied the mezzanine level. Preceding the cubicle by about 15 years, the Johnson Wax space was called the “Great Workroom.” The furniture was manufactured by Steelcase Inc, who would later rise to be a major manufacturer alongside Hermann Miller of cubicles.


[Tati's Playtime, where M Hulot confronts the labyrinth of cubiclopia]
Jacques Tati’s Playtime riffed on the disorienting qualities of the modern workplace of the 1960s.


[Steelcase Inc's Topo workspace]


[Steelcase Inc's Topo workspace]
The cubicle today maintains a consistent place in interior urbanism. Manufacturers downplay its hermetic quality by asserting a more open enclosure.

Come Out and Play

New Orleans tourism officials recently unveiled a new advertisement campaign promoting the city as fun ... again. The campaign is titled "Come Out and Play" and arrives on the heels of information released that tourism doubled in 2007 (7.1 million visitors) from 2006 (3.7 million) writes nola.com.



The campaign cost a whopping $5.6 million and begs the question in a city desperate for development if this is in fact money well spent. In the age of competitive cities it is staggering the amount of money spent on promotional material and advertisements to boost tourism and lure new residents. Short of declaring the mourning is over - lets just move on, the advert spots present imagery in search of a different kind of post-disaster relief.


[image: via the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp (NOTMC)]

The New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp (NOTMC), author of the campaign, writes:

The print ads celebrate the music, food, history, and architecture of New Orleans. Beautiful post-Katrina photography will appear in national magazines with broad distribution including top travel and lifestyle magazines such as Travel+Leisure, Food & Wine, Southern Living, and Southern Accents. Newspaper ads to promote special events have been created, as well as special advertorial sections in The New Yorker and Texas Monthly to reach the upscale cultural visitor.

Target markets for the promotion are "regional markets" that have historically visited N.O. such as Atlanta, Memphis, and New York.