2613 say yeah!

the fear in infrastructure

2007-09-12T11:16:00.000+02:00

those who have ever seen 'irreversible' by gaspard noe will probably remember the eerie rape scene in the tunnel under the street. next to it being a gripping scene that left you sick and disgusted with mankind - great acting, one shot only, oh my god you get the point - it perfectly illustrates the scary thing with infrastructure.

linear infrastructure that is.

you see, the annoying thing with long, enclosed lines of movement like tunnels, but also trains, is that you can see the exit, but you're not there yet. and anything can happen on the way there. well, they tell you anything can happen. of course no ghouls will jump out of the walls or paratroopers will descent through a freshy blown hole in the ceiling, but you never know.

man is prone to fear. fear of not having any options left. perhaps an analogy with a famous computer game is at its place here. we all know pacman. heck, pacman has been an essential part of many 80s youngsters youth. either at home or in the arcade, we all tried to eat all the balls and avoid getting caught by the ghosts. however, we were always given an overview of the game map, indicating where the ghosts were, instead imagine a 3D version of pacman. you are running through endless hallways, all exactly alike, and you don't know what is either behind or ahead of you. you just have an arrow indicating where the exit (kind of) is. this fear (i can already see myself doing this in a nightmare) of infrastructure as an exponent of fear is something i aim to investigate. can infrastructure dissolve fear? is visibility enough?

let's call it infearstructure.

but there is hope: just think about the light at the end of the tunnel - or, as two famous dutch comicbook characters (a duck and a canary) once said: 'and at the end of the tunnel, one big tropical swimming pool!'

potential weapons for a music festival

2007-09-10T12:30:00.000+02:00

visited the 'city is ours' festival this saturday, at the terrain of the haagse hogeschool in the hague. music was good (digitalism, goose, freeform five) but the execution of the whole thing was kind of sketchy. it started at the door, where there was only one bouncer to search everybody. in these times of threat level red/orange/pink/whatever it is most important to make sure that nobody with evil intentions gets into your music festival, so there better be a good check. by one guy for 5000 people.

anyway, the festival was called 'the city is ours' because MTV (the great company that brought us room raiders, taildaters and other left-ear-in-right-ear-out programs) claimed that with organizing it, it would show the city how freedom, love and happiness could unite a city. for 30 euros though. on an island with a big fence around it... what struck me however, was that when you ordered a coke, you got one in a bottle. nothing wrong with it, you'd say, if you ignore the fact that they gave you a capless bottle. can i please have the cap, i asked. i'm sorry sir, the bartender said, we can't give you the cap because you can use it as a weapon then.

stop right there.

who would ever use this

as a weapon?? it's a goddamn freakin' PLASTIC coke bottle. we're not made of sugar are we? not allowing me to have a cap on my coke bottle is about the only reason that makes me want to use it as a weapon instead of something like:

A FESTIVAL FLYER

festival flyers piss me off, even more than dutch schlager songs inbetween performances. there's just too many of them, most of them are ugly and i don't want to go to a party with bubbling beats. festival flyers kill by the power of numbers, very very large numbers.

KIDS

why in the name of god would you want to bring your kids to a festival. if i come home, i am bruised, battered and kind of drunk. i don't want to imagine what could happen to your kids. plus, they run around too much. kids can be lethal in that they annoy other people that come to you to beat you up instead of your kids. i mean, they do look quite right?

NICKELBACK

simply seeing this photo makes me wanna kill myself.

FOOD

festival food is a slow killer. and it's a very nihilistic and existential one. only the next day, when you try to summarize all the beverages and snacks you consumed during the festival, and you suddenly realize that you probably ate stuff that even pigs ignore, you feel very small. festival food is normally made from the stuff they scrape off the bottom of frying pans, and then moulded, sprayed or pasted into a shape that more or less resembles regular food.

if there is anything that should not be allowed at a festival, it should be festival food.

to graduate ot not to graduate

2007-09-07T23:36:00.000+02:00

for now, mostly not to graduate, due to:

wait. maybe i should restart this blog and write completely uninteresting stories about what i am trying to work on for my graduation project at the faculty of architecture at the TU Delft (don't click this link, this website sucks), aptly named: the global anti-global; on speed, security and space

my research will focus on the increasing influence fear has in the built environment of the cities around us, the streets we walk through and even the houses we live in.

this is what happens when fear takes over our lives:

in sydney, asian and pacific leaders have gathered for their annual(?) meeting on economics, killing people and (because it's totally cool to talk about) the environment. the city has been closed down at a cost of 100 million US dollars.

i understand that it is not favourable if any of the worldleaders gathered in sydney gets hurt (we don't want people going crazy over dead presidents do we now...) but from a completely paralyzed city no one benefits.

didn't some wise man once said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"? well, this is exactly what we are afraid of now, i'd say. when i walk around on amsterdam train station i see billboards of the train-ticketguy, and apparently, he also helps fighting terrorism. but i can still take my knife ('but sir, it's okay, it's a breadknife.") on a continental flight in the states.

anyway, the plan is to finally start using my blog regularly (yes, i'll give it another try) to report on my graduation process, and not to spend any time on either of these things:

facehunter
go fug yourself
entourage
facebook
youtube
flickr
archinect
wikipedia
soulseek
...

take the train! it gets you somewhere!

2007-07-15T12:59:00.000+02:00

like wolvega, for example.

not that i wanted to, but it made me go there anyway. the story goes: spent the weekend on terschelling for a friends wedding. had my moustache blown off in the windy beach club where the party was, slept on the floor of a ginormous tent and had to take the train back...

as we all know (or should know, common knowledge like water boils at 100 degrees), the dutch railways never take you to your destination straight away. nope, they want you to see your beautiful country, they feel it is their responsibility to educate their passengers about the most arbitrary shit, like wolvega.

let's see what the web has to tell us about wolvega...

flickr:

and this is the caption: Libbe de Jong (53), known criminal, murdered in his house in Wolvega. Third murder in three weeks in Friesland, police does forensic investigation.

okay, wait. there apparently is crime going on in wolvega. you know what, wolvega probably sucks, but a little google-action on the dead guy might get interesting...

according to the web (in dutch) our good friend libbe de jong spent almost twenty years of his life in prison for rape, threats, violence and stalking. alltogether, a nice guy, kind of perfect son-in-law. if he wasn't doing time, he would sell sweaters on the market or at the stadium of soccerclub sc heerenveen. he would call himself 'de truienkoning' (the sweater king) and it is told he had a throne made entirely out of polo sport rugby sweaters. he also killed two guys over a lost game of poker. yes, poker. so it does incite violence. for those of you who know heroes, the amazing show on superpowers and other supernatural stuff, you probably remember the episode where hiro and the other guy end up in this basement with behind the door some guys playing a very animated game of poker. noise ensues and approximately 12.3 seconds later everybody in the game room is a flatliner.

so how would one kill another one in a game of poker? i mean, those cards don't look extremely lethal. you could cut the skin inbetween your fingers with one, but that's about it. and a chip at your head would barely leave a mark. there is a poker version called murder, but that ain't really deadly. there's these guys on youtube that seem to dress a dead guy in poker cards, but again, not really convincing.

except in vegas. in vegas we have the flesh bet game. a-ma-zing.

anyhow, this post is not really going anywhere. but to finish my story about wolvega, beautiful city in friesland, i'll keep it short: embrace. embrace the place.

the narrow netherlands

2007-02-22T01:55:00.000+01:00

please hold your horses.

the netherlands have just become a tad more narrower. right as i started to believe the shrinking of my beloved country hade kind of come to a halt, one initiative put us right next to our already pretty petite neighbour, belgium.

in belgium, they leave the lights on. anywhere, anytime. belgium, together with the south of the netherlands and the north of france are one of the brightest areas in the world. we can't see any stars - maybe that explains our humble nature.

but can it explain this?

the dutch organization that monitors safety in traffic and advises the dutch government on the issue, 'veilig verkeer nederland', has just launched its newest bid in the very highly regarded competition of most retarded, most what-the-fuck-is-going-on-with-you-people proposal for the people in the street, us. you. me.

and this is it: to counter the increase in violence (both verbal and physical) in traffic, they propose a gesture to make, to explain you're sorry to whoever you just pissed off. they want you, him, her, me to lift our open hand in the air.

well, let me just do that right now, because i think this proposal is outright stupid and blind.

1. i already apologize when i fuck up. i don't draw a gun and start shooting around (something they sometimes happen to do in los angeles - other story). and i don't think a lot of people react different from me. it has a name: common sense.

2. why the fuck does this have to be presented as an official proposal. there is something as, once again, common sense. if you don't get this concept, please shoot yourself. this is not a threat, but just a suggestion because if you don't disappear from the surface of this planet it would be a straight waist of oxygen, water and space - things a lot of people can obviously make better use of than you.

3. and this is the cherry on the pie.
the dutch union for sign language strongly disagrees with the proposed sign, because - apparently, not that i care a flying fuck - the official sign for sorry is circling your fist in front of your chest. kind of like stirring the soup, i guess. while driving.

this stupid kind of ruckus once again acknowledges the dutch's image as 'best boy in class'.

biggest turd would problaby be better.

back to my polder.

to ask a chinaman

2007-02-12T21:06:00.000+01:00

since i had acquired so many books, clothing and other shenanigans during my stay in the city of angels, i figured it wouldn't all fit in the suitcase i brought to los angeles. given this problem being a problem of supply and demand, i had to figure if i was in a buyers' market or a sellers' market.

demand - space to store my stuff
supply - one measly suitcase

well, what other people know more about supplying demanding citizens that the noble chinese? where else to find a cheap, spacious suitcase that would at least be sturdy enough to rock it out all the way back to amsterdam, than in chinatown, north of the 101, just around broadway. not much later, we were standing in front of a nice collection of suitcases, all very eloquently prized.

the vendor, however, was not of the same eloquence. meaning: he spoke fuck-o english. it was a very short talk with him answering all our questions with "yes, very pretty bag, cheap!" before i made the purchase.

if this guy answers all questions in exactly the same way, why did the conversation not go a bit more like this?

we: "so, would you recommend this suitcase for transporting a chopped-up body, or do we need a smaller, second suitcase for the head?"

him: "yes, very pretty bag, cheap!"

we: "but i think you want to remove the family members that are still stuck in that corner first, right?"

him: "yes, very pretty bag, cheap!"

we: "is it fireproof?"

him: "yes, very pretty bag, cheap!"

we: "..."

anyway, you can probably guess that this whole scheme very quickly slid down the slippery slopes of stereotyping and more of the stuff you don't want people to know about when you're running for congress.

if this sounds interesting to you, my dear readers, i would recommend going to the pearl market (hong qiao) in beijing. just see this image and imagine...

5 stories full of cheap knock offs.

oh, and the suitcase i bought cost me 18 bucks.

superbowl say yeah!

2007-02-07T13:50:00.000+01:00

i just, accidentally, happened to be in the US of A during the superbowl. and, ow how super it was...

as a reminder or maybe a refreshment, understand this: watching sports in the us is not just about supporting your team, as it would be in old europe. it is a social thing. and it is big.

every year, cbs (lucky fuckers) brags about airing the biggest happening in television. more than 1 billion (1.000.000.000) people apparently take some time of to watch this game. well, i never knew there were that many people in the world that had a tee-vee, not even mentioning rocking cbs on channel 2. so cbs wants a lot of money from advertisers, to get even.

because, let's make this sure: watching the superbowl on tv suck. big time. donkey balls. now i have to say that i have never been a big fan of football (i tried to watch the last two superbowls - kick-off at 2 am CET) but damn! this sport was never ment to be televised! but if they stop the game every twenty friggin' seconds just because some retard in a black-and-white sweater saw one of the guys catch the ball and hit the ground with both knees before running off towards the enemy's endzone, i might as well get a drink and a sandwich.

and that is exactly why the superbowl (or suPPerbowl) is still going strong. it brings in a lot of money. together with the three people i watched the game with, we spent 40 bucks on beer, tortilla chips, fries and cheesy corn-on-a-cob (a recommendation, nevertheless) and in the end we felt nothing but disappointment. come on, what ever happened in this game?? the indiana(polis) (indiana for short, because indianapolis is way too difficult for the average wal-mart-shopping, superbowl-watching american) colts won, but for whatever i care, manchester united would have won with a 12-goal difficient! okay, our reception was assured through having the cable hanging from a wire behind the sink, but even that couldn't stop me and the others from experiencing some genuine american deception...

and it still amazes me: americans spend a (probable) whopping 400 million on this shit, but at the same time, the economy suffers from a lot of slacking on post-superbowl-monday, when we all talk about peyton manning's incredible passing and the bucketload of fumbles and turnovers on the side of the bears of some nice cup of "fresh"-brewed starbucks coffee.

...and than i haven't even discussed all the statistics stuff. what's up with that??

#6. raunchy red tape and beautiful booty

2007-02-02T03:45:00.000+01:00

red tape aka bureaucray will be the demise of humanity.

a friend of mine had his car impounded for driving around with an expired license. shit happens. today we went to the police station to try and get the car back. we all took a day off, just in case it would take some time. and take time it did.

the detective at the station managed to tell my friend his car was impounded for:

1. driving around with an expired license
2. driving around with a suspended license
3. driving under the influence

we are all confused.

but even cops get to have some fun. waiting in the reception area, another detective walked out a lady that didn't exactly were fugly. she was nice. and the cops knew it, too. while she slowly walks out, 5 pairs of eyes (mine plus 4 cops') watch her behind. the moment the door falls shut behind her, everybody looks at the detective, and then we start laughing. here is my recollection of the discussion that followed - sort of, i was still impressed by her physical appearance:

detective: "i feel so bad, i just couldn't help her, she really didn't deserve to be the bad guy!"
cop 1: "well, to protect and to serve, right?"
detective: "i just couldn't stop staring at hear shirt man! i wish i could wear my sunglasses..."
cop 2: "you should have just said you were suffering from some eye infection."
detective: "like too many beautiful victims of undeserved crimes crossed my eyes?"
cop 1, cop 2, cop 3, detective: "mwoehahahah!"
me: (silently smiling) ...

anyway, back to the red tape story. i took my friend 45 minutes to get the papers to go and pick up the car at the impound lot, a few blocks away. the detective didn't understand the whole story either, so just gave him a pass on the whole expired-suspended-dui thingy.

in the impound lot, we discover that it's gonna cost 1303 dollars to get the car back. my friend kept trying to cheer himself up by saying it's just like shopping. well maybe, but shopping for a car that is probably not even worth 1303 dollars, you must have a pretty distorted sense of irony to see it a shopping.

but... more red tape. it turned out the car was not in the impound lot we were, but at another one across the town, one that - of course - is only open from something like 6-8 am. we just did our duty, paid, and then started asking for how long we could leave the car in the other lot before we would pick it up. not too long, obviously, the lady told us, asap would be best.

the friend still doesn't have a valid license, i don't either, so we needed the third guy to pick it up.

next time: why my friend still doesn't have a valid license...

#5. on parks and parkinglots

2007-02-01T00:49:00.000+01:00

walking around downtown los angeles is an exhausting experience. of course there is a height difference of around 50 meters between the lowest and the highest point in the intra-interstate downtown area, but that is just a small detail.

what i am talking about is that even though 'downtown' la is the center of one of the biggest cities in the world, it doesn't feel like it. besides the conglomeration of highrises around bunker hill, downtown la feels more like some second-rank industrial area that also happens to house people.

lately however, the city is trying to improve the image and experience of downtown. no more ridiculously tall skyscrapers is one thing - mike davis described the bunker hill dilemma in his book city of quartz, more skyscrapers means more money for the city. true, but it also drives away the people and thus the spirit of the town. - bringing in more people is another one. los angeles still looks like a bombed out city in a lot of places.

and like in most other bombed out cities - detroit, philadelphia (sort of), berlin (still!) - these barren lands have been filled up with parking lots to accommodate the ever growing number of people that work in downtown. a lot of these parking lots are being demolished to make way for medium to expensive condos, lofts and appartment buildings. the city tries to attract a crowd to downtown that could possibly compete with the swank crowds of manhattan, downtown san francisco or boston.

sci-arc moved into the artist district a good 7 years ago. back then, rents were still afforable and there were still plentiful structures available capable of housing a crowd of 450+. sci-arc was on the vanguard of the re-urbanization of downtown. back in 1999, nobody wanted to go there. it smelled, there was nothing to do and it was plain ugly. a lot has changed since then. it is less smelly and there is more to do. it is, however, still fairly ugly:

this was once a parking lot. now it houses overpriced condos for people that don't mind about gentrification.

sci-arc's lease will once be over. if downtown continues to gentrify, it will probably be too expensive to continue the lease of the freight yard. we will have to move. isn't it ironic that in the mobile environment of los angeles, the architecture schools follow that same trend of mobility, only staying in every place for a couple of years, infecting the site with creativity, and moving out before it gets too boring?

of parking parks
recapture: one step of beefing up downtown is building more housing. but here, more housing also means more cars and thus more parking lots of parking structures. there are a lot of people that live in downtown but work somewhere else, in the valley, hollywood or down south. they live here however, because they can travel against the traffic. no jams in the morning, on time for dinner in the evening.

these people need a place to park. in-house parking lots are expensive - up to $ 25,000 a spot), so it is easier to build it just next door. these parking lots still spread through downtown like an agressive virus, overwhelming everything within reach. downtown now not only suffers from film shoots blocking up street and disturbing public life, it has also caught a parking fever.

plans have already been proposed to counter the inconvenience caused by film crews: convert empty structures around downtown into warehouses for film equipment, so that trailers no longer have to crowd the streets whenever bruce willis is shooting a new installment for die hard.

so what to do with the parking lots? is there perhaps a possibility to turn parking lots around downtown into parks? if we were to do that, los angeles would become one of the greenest cities in the country, given the enormous number of parking lots that already exist. don't allow anymore cars in the center, but offer a high-density public transport network, allowing for people to get around quickly and cheaply. turn downtown into a neighbourhood where you could actually raise a child without worries. if we want to repopulate downtown, and make it look like a real city, density is not the only solution. a liveable environment, where you can safely walk your dog, cross the street without having to worry about being run over by some renegade driver. make people proud of the place they live. make them live there because they want to, not only because it's easy with the traffic.

can you imagine if all this were green?

#4. working 9 to 5

2007-01-30T09:49:00.000+01:00

oh, how i sort of long for that.

sci-arc never sleeps. people live here, they even have pets.

coming from a school that closes at ten in the evening, is closed at weekends and that is basically way to small to house all attending students, sci-arc was a blessing. the experience of being able to hang around school 24/7 is one i will never forget. coming back to school, at 4 at night after a party in hollywood to do some work in a buzzed state is interesting, to say the least. having my own desk, not spending hours to look for one, is a thing of both joy and beauty.

now that i am ready to go back to my own school in the netherlands, what will i tell my friends about studying architecture at sci-arc?

being able to go to school 24 hours a day gives way to unbridled working ethics. bluntly said, people tend to work to much. i was no exception. back in delft i pulled around 4-6 all nighters a semester. here i think i did at least 15. in a one month shorter semester. it is all about being part of the gang and being dragged in. sleeping on the couch has transformed from being a job-related inconvenience to a comfortable moment away from architecture.

attending a school that has limited opening times does have its benefits. you learn a life without architecture. you learn to fit the amount of work in less hours than here at sci-arc. work in delft is all related to credits. 1 credit is 28 hours of work, and you have to generate 60 credits each year, which is 10 months. you do the math.

sci-arc studiowork knows no boundaries. there are studios where people have an average of two sleepless nights a week. because professors are reluctant to translate assignments into acceptable workloads, burnout is quite of common appearance.

anyway, back to work or else i'll have to make mine an all-nighter ;)

#3. one day too late

2007-01-30T09:29:00.000+01:00

got stuck in traffic. my bet.

all because in the states we don't have rules for right of way, no, we have this:

meaning: at every junction we stop, look left, look right, look left again, and only then we slowly pull up.

here we have carpool lanes you can ride with only 2 (two!) people.

i don't know if it's just a dutch thing, but here we have never heard of zipping (ritsen) when the road narrows a lane. maybe it's the ultimate example of polder modelling - even in the car we tend to agree in general concensus - but people, it actually makes sense!

here we have automatic cars. one memorable quote by the great vincent gallo says it all:

"Is this a shifter car? I cannot drive a shifter car, alright, so we got a little situation here. I can't drive these kinda cars! What the fuck is goin' on! You think that's funny? Would you like to know, smartass? Would you like to know why I can't drive this kinda car? I'll tell you why, I'm used to *luxury* cars. Have you ever heard of a luxury car? You know what luxury means? Ever heard of Cadillac, Cadillac Eldorado? That's what I drive. I drive cars that *shift* themselves."

here we almost don't have any public transport, cause public transport is for suckers (sorry chao).

when i walk from home to school (just an 8 minute walk, across the 4th street bridge) people slow their cars down, lower their window and call me a cracker. okay, i am from europe, i don't believe that having a car is the ultimate sign of civilization or prosperity, but calling me a cracker, come on!

any way, next time i'll try to leave the home a little notch earlier. promise.

#2. there ain't no party like a LA party

2007-01-28T00:53:00.000+01:00

and that's a fact.

even standing in line rocks like iggy did in his heyday. oh wait, he still rocks.

and now, a random list of venues to go to, if you ever happen to be in LA.

hear gallery - closed but reopened as blowupLA. very loftparty-like. nice bands, shitty dj's that do drop some raving tunes.

safari sams - nice, big freakin' dancefloor and they like the trashy eurotunes (justicia!)

cinespace - smells like vomit, but it has the cobrasnake and steve aoki ;)

boardners - nice. just that. but bring a friend and a camera and this is what happens. thank you carlos. and tony foxxxxx is a poseur.

vanguard - expensive as hell and they let the best dj's play in the shittiest room. however, thank you dfa dj squad for giving me a very entertaining evening.

the echo - girl talk brought the roof down, the resident dj's a little bit less. but it was fun buying our way in with the bouncer, while people staying in line for 5, 6, 7 hours were yelling all kinda things that i am not gonna say here. but fuck you, fuck you and fuck you too, i'm getting in!

the hyperion lounge - nice cosy little place, and it is always nice if the owners let you throw down some tracks.

spaceland - it's got the fishbowl for the smokers - look at them!

houseparties - i think every city has its own kind of house/loft/roof parties. good thing about LA roofparties is the skyline that nicely frames your attempts at not getting drunk.

and we also have the indoorparties. with japanese and hungarian people and a shitload of equipment. inside an architecture office.

last, but cliche-wise definitely not least, sci-arc very own fridays@five. normally starts at seven, but fridays@seven doesn't really sound as good, does it. anyway, lots of different themes; college drinking games, NightAtTheAlleyBar, polkadots, 4agoodtime, 3biza, and so on. bad thing (or good, depends on what you planned for the rest of the evening) is you will be drunk by nine 'o clock

ain't that nice.

out.

#1. On the LA river - dear mr. owen moss, i have to disagree with you

2007-01-26T23:22:00.000+01:00

there is a big, concrete structure running through Los Angeles. it is, somewhat archaically, called the LA river. it is not a river. only once every few years, thanks to torrential rains, the river swells from its backwater-sized width that one can easily jump across to a stream of a more modest size. yet it can never be a real river again, like it was long ago, before the gold-rush, before the missionaries.

Eric Owen Moss, the director of sci-arc and principal of the aptly-named LA-based architecture firm Eric Owen Moss architects, recently won the History Channel's competition "the city of the future: a design and engineering challenge".

anyway, hooray hooray for mr Owen Moss. lots of interesting and less interesting articles and interviews on the competition have appeared in the last few weeks, and more and more i feel like Owen Moss' LA of the future is not the LA of the future we will live to see, even though the design premise actually sounds interesting and promising.

Taking the ubiquitous (i still think this is a word that should be made easier. come on, when we are talking about sex, who uses the expression copulation?), say omnipresent (still different, but a little bit less than the other one...) la river, as Owen Moss calls it, and treating it as just another piece of infrastructure, angelenos would re-inhabit the banks of this dying piece of nature, bringing east LA closer to downtown, thus bringing wealth and prosperity to new classes of people.

Moss starts off promising, but come on, the LA river is not omni-present. it is a gutter and it is treated like one. the bridges that cross it are not constructed to be tall to let great steamships through, just to let trains with cargo through.

on the statement that east LA is a different city, i can only agree with Owen Moss. but it is not just east LA. it is the whole of the built structure that fills the basin and the surrounding valleys. unlike most other contemporary cities, Los Angeles is not greater than the sum of its parts. why? those goddamned cars, and the infrastructure that serves them. if you want to bring LA together, a move that would completely disregard the current state of the city, why would you use the one structure that divides everything? why don't we transform all highways into bus-lanes only, forcing people out of the car.

Owen Moss' view of the future of LA is an honourable one, i have to admit. it is optimistic and tries to make the best of it. It is not, however, a realistic one.

can you imagine this stretch of land ever to be the instigator of overcoming racial, social and economic divide in Los Angeles?

from this:

to this:

i still see a big concrete ditch.
please read this links and reply. even you, eric ;)

Eric Owen Moss - The leading architect on why L.A. is poised to be the city of the future

and

LA Weekly - a vote for the future

and

Eric Owen Moss Architects - plan for the future of the city of LA (pdf)

fuck LA and fuck sci-arc, but i am still moved by them

2007-01-26T22:57:00.000+01:00

bold statements require bold explanatory observations. so making up for my lack of posting during the past few months, i will make this one a homerun: 7 in 7.

seven statements about the city of angels, los angeles, and about the school that never sleeps, sci-arc.

from the desk of mr. lady:

yr studio is a city

2006-12-29T05:43:00.000+01:00

shooting a film is an anal thing when it comes to privacy and exclusion from the real world. we’d rather keep the reel of the movie separated from the real of the world we are making a film about. this physical separation results in autonomous enclaves within the city, where you can only get in with a pass and an appropiate id.

taking the movie studio out of its exclusive surroundings and bringing it into the real world could generate a whole new way of looking at both film and the city. using the city not only as a visual element but also as a programmatic part of the process of filmmaking, thereby redefining the art of filming of and living in the city.

what better place to experiment with new concepts of visual urbanism than china? the cities of china are being built, destroyed and rebuilt at a pace only cinema could understand. the results are disputable, but what is certain is that cities like beijing or shanghai are undergoing a transformation that leaves their old urban fabric torn and indistinghuisable.

yr studio is a city looks both at contemporary china as well as at old, pre-capitalist china. the intricate structure of the hutongs, the old housing neighbourhoods, are adapted for modern times. their visually entangling physique is reconstructed, not only graphically, but also programmatically.

the city becomes a place where filming is no longer a separate, disjoint operation but something that will be as common as walking or eating your dog.

grand entry in the grove

2006-11-14T06:45:00.000+01:00

even in a car-based city as los angeles there are still some places people use their feet to go around. the venice beach boardwalk, parts of downtown and the farmers' markets are among those. another place designed for walking is the grove l.a. but even here you are forcefully reminded you are in la, the capital of car country.

the grove is basically a shopping mall urban development as there are so many of in the united states and canada (and more and more in old europe). it has a nice, old imported look on its facades so people don't feel at home; remember, for a lot of americans going to one of those big-ass shopping centers, like the west edmonton mall or the mall of the americas, is like going to paris or london for a lot of europeans. it's a special thing to do, so you better have a good time when there.

and to be honest, they did give it a try. you have people walking around, a wide array of shops, restaurants and a very, very, very big movie theater. there is even a little tram driving around on a track. i would almost buy it as being the real, unfabricated world, if it wasn't for the way you enter the area: through a parking garage.

there is no apparent pedestrian entrance, the streets inside the complex run into dead walls and as you can see, there is no real designing in the parking garage structure (although the apparently endless repetition of beams and columns could propably inspire some latter-day structuralists...). it is this transition from parking to walking that makes the grove so undeniably hollywood-ian. everything is fake, just a facade. and just like the moment you walk out of a movie theatre and realize that it was all fake, the moment you leave the luscious and friendly environment of the grove, you realize you are in la: the car is waiting.

add:
a friend told me an interesting thing about universal's city walk. since we're in la, everything you see and every image is somewhat from another place from around the world. hollywood likes to mimick the planet. but in citywalk, la actually mimicks itself. you have a piece of downtown, venice, hollywood and even compton. but most of all, a lot of universal.

since i have forgotten to bring my camera there (twice already; bad architect!), the photos here are not my own. photo 1 is by binaryla, photo 2 is by supermod. you don't know it, but thanks. next time i'll bring my own camera.

There is but one window left

2006-11-12T01:10:00.000+01:00

If the 1960s brought the frontiers of the state from its political borders to the interior of our cities, then john carpenters’ 1996 film ‘Escape from LA’ presented us with a new kind of frontier: the city as a state, devoid from all sense of justice, common behaviour and moral laws. Besides a 100-minute orgy of violence, explosions and other Hollywood-generated fireworks, the movie offered viewers an interesting concept of control and interface in a not too distant future.

The ‘Big One’ has seperated Los Angeles from the rest of the United States and gave the fictional, fascistoid government the opportunity to create a new prison state on the LA island. Criminals are shipped in, much like the United Kingdom used Australia as a prison island in the 1800s. The main protagonists in the film are equipped with tracking devices that precisely tell the command center on the other side of the San Fernando Sea where they are and where they are moving to. Human being has been reduced to being nothing more but a bleep on a computer screen. Geographical scale and position have been terminated in a reductionist matter that leaves nothing but vectors and data. No interaction or visual information is transmitted to the operators; in this world of digits, it is not necessary.

Just like the military movements of Escape from L.A. have been rid of their aggressive impact, bullets and fleshwounds in order to make the order of battle comprehensible in the headquarters of the US Army – or United States Police Force – the ways of airtraffic are greatly being reduced and schematized before their instanteneous appearance on the air traffic controller’s preferably monochromatic screens. What we perceive as ‘the control tower’ is nothing more than a cinematic, impressive farce, designed to give the airtraveller the soothing feeling of safety they so much crave for before entering those flying tubes of potential death and destruction. The ‘windows’ of the control tower control and show nothing but taxiing aircraft, excreting their passengers onto the ground planes or absorbing other ones for another act of geographic displacement.

The windows are not the action. The action is one floor below or above, in an ironically windowless room. We are not to be distracted by real windows when we are watching our screens where a dramatic pseudo-three dimensional play of vectors in space is taking place, yesterday, today, tomorrow. This disconnection from the real and physical world, imposed upon us by technology and translated to us through the screen, or third window as Virilio calls it, both gives us a farstretching power and at the same time a strange distance from real-life events.

We are entering the world of the ‘participatory and pro-active panopticon’. There are already maps of Amsterdam and Manhattan that index the locations of surveillance cameras. It is not about being seen anymore, it is about avoiding being seen. We no longer just cast our vote for a presidential election or a environmental proposition, we now also vote for American Idols, the next personal assistant of Donald Trump or who has to leave Big Brother’s House. This dangerous intrusion in real life will take a new turn when the physical borders of this country will be replaced by virtual ones. A website showing us realtime video footage of the US-Mexican border will allow everybody to play his or her own private minuteman, securing America’s borders from behind the screen.

The original Windows of the World came down on September 11, 2001. Their intent however had long before been taken over by the screen. The destruction of the World Trade Center’s restaurant was more than anything else a symbolic act. It represented the demise of the physical window as a transmitter of images and content. In this world of the omni-present panopticon all is reduced to the screen. Whether its illegal immigrants crossing the border, airplanes in the sky or guerilleros in Los Angeles, all is represented on the screen. Virilio’s analogy of the three windows has proven true. It has overdone itself. We are no longer being commanded by the first window of the door, or the second window of the hole in the wall. They are no longer necessary for a world where geography and distance have already disappeared. We can live and let live, by the act of watching Virilio’s third window alone.

inspired by subtopia.

Defying gravity

2006-11-10T01:22:00.000+01:00

With the arrival of the internet, of low-cost cariers and of global terrorism, the concept of distance has finally disappeared. What remains is a unified plane where everything is at the same place at the same time. Together with speed, gravity is disappearing as well. When Burt Rutan managed to launch a spaceship into the outer layers of the atmosphere, he defied the more classic ruleset of governments and countries defining the boundaries of space. He overcame gravity.

If we combine these two factors of transformation, we arrive at a crossroad in space and time Paul Virilio has been fascinated by for a long time. Since gravity is no longer anything more than a constant, only keeping us from floating away from the earth’s surface, we must redefine our own relationship with gravity and its messenger, the ground’s plane.

For long and oft architecture has been a tool to characterize places and spaces, to identify them and to give them value. Those values were often solely based on the opinion of the instigator of the architecture, less than on that of the creator of the architecture, the architect. Adolf Hitler wanted to create his vision of the world, not only by conquering and oppressing almost the entire European peninsula, but also by building a capital city, Germania, bigger and bolder than ever encountered by mankind before. The grotesque collection of buildings along the two axis of the plan not only defined space, they defined distance as well. To cross the north-south axis would mean to cross more than 300 feet of boulevards, trees and gardens. To walk from the southend to the northend of this axis would mean to cover a distance of more than four miles. More than that the spaces defined the extremes of this plan, it were the distances that were really the instrument of power, the tool to make a visitor feel small and irrelevant.

Commonday society is no longer based on distance or gravity. It has become nothing more than a variable in the bigger field of vehicular vectors, of speed. Virilio’s habitable circulation eagerly anticipated this move. It negates both distance and gravity by creating a continuous plane of movement, habitation and place. There is no distance anymore, since you already find yourself in the plane of destination.

Military technology, Virilio states, has made the distinction between object and distance, between vehicle and projectile disappear. The distinction has been replaced by a uniform entity or quality, the vector. In architecture, as well as in the field of military operations, vectors need a point of origin; they simply cannot appear out of nowhere. The cruise missile still needs a launch platform to begin its devastating crusade against the enemy, as much as architecture still needs the ground plane to reach for the stars. A student in Delft once designed a house, floating in the air, only kept upright by a single line, extending from a crane located on the balcony of that same house. Architecture as its own legislator and judge.

Structures of spatial repression and segregation in an age without distance are archaic in their ideology and yet crushingly modern in their effect. Like the wall around the West Bank, designed to keep Palestine terrorists from entering Israel, does not only redefine circulation in a spatial matter, it also redefines circulation on a social level. This wall is not only a barrier to counter the speed of terrorist intrusion, it is also a barrier to slow down the development of Palestine society. Like a self fulfilling prophecy, it is creating its own reason for existence.

In a city as Los Angeles, distance has already disappeared. It has been replaced by continuous place. You don’t have to leave the city to go anywhere. Anaheim is Santa Monica is San Fernando. This disappearance of distance and unification of place has primarily been caused by the automobile. Its ability to cover a considerable amount of distance in a short time allowed the cities to expand beyond classic boundaries, imposed by the man on feet. Compare the Los Angeles basin with the ‘Randstad’ in the Netherlands, and you will find two different metropolitan areas. Whereas in Los Angeles, distance has been gone completely, in the Randstad there still is a notion of it. One still has the feeling he is covering a certain distance traveling from, say, Rotterdam to Amsterdam, most notably because of the difference in backdrops one encounters during the travel. By obliterating difference and distance in the city, one automatically loses the ‘feeling’ for a city.

Manuel Delanda once said, “difference is the fuel of evolution”. Perhaps distance is the fuel of the city.

the segregated airport

2006-10-31T03:16:00.000+01:00

been spending a lot of time on and in airports lately. and however it may sound familiar or even outdated, i also feel that airports are more and more becoming like cities.

subject: automated walkways.

case: tokyo narita airport

narita, tokyo's major airport, is laidout in a rather classic spoke system. the different gate areas are all located on the ends of longer piers, connecting at the central arrivals hall. unlike for example atlanta, where all terminals are linear and situated parallel to each other, connected through a underground rail, tokyo narita is small enough to be walkable. still there are automated walkways. the longest one does make sense, being over 150 meters, but the smaller ones, only extending to about twenty feet, are simply put absurd.

for one, they create horizontal barriers in an already horizontal space. many airports have the uncomfortable tendency to appear as extremely long, horizontal and monotonous. boring. automated walkways not only divide up the already segregated spaces, they also tend to cluster facilities and passengers at their beginnings (or ends). like the highway in the city, the exits are where the urban craziness appears, however at a high price.

but where the city is often able to offer a wide array of niche facilities away from the highway exits and crossings, in places where land is cheaper and more abundant, the airport has no room to offer to those often interesting businesses. we are forever condemned to the same franchises in airports. mcdonalds, starbucks and duty-free shops will cluster at the entrances of the walkways like jack-in-the-box, home depot and gas stations will.

the gentrification of the airport is not a result of programmatic reason, dependent on financial factors, but much more a result of the spatial lay-out of the circulation spaces.

written over the pacific #3

a very interesting proposal for an airport of the 21st century can be seen here.

_md417* 1 km/h drive thru airport by miklos deri

personal glorification in the aught's

2006-10-30T07:27:00.000+01:00

just remembered being on a flight from chicago to la, when i got into talking with the lady sitting next to me. we talked a bit, laughed at each others jokes and so on, and got to the inevitable gestures of social behaviour: so what's the reason for your visit to la? (think the 'security' officer at your local airport, but than less paranoid)

i explained my sci-arc study plans, explained about delft and architecture and the whole ram-bam. next was her turn. she told me she had a documentary film production company in chicago. nothing special, going to la for movie production people is like going to the toilet for you and me. the best part however, was that it was no ordinary documentaries she made.

whenever somebody contacted her to make a documentary, it would be about somebody else.

say you are filthy rich, and think your better half/best friend/father/mother(/pet for i don't know who's sake), really deserves a nice tribute video for his/her/its birthday/graduation/first teeth/..., al you have to do is contact the nice lady's company and they do the rest. they hunt down old high school loves, interview the subject's favourite college professor or car salesman, all to turn it into a nice video, to be given to the person in question.

nice...?

personal glorification is not new. it's been around since the year zero. roman emperors liked to have their face everywhere, have their own temples erected or even name a wall after themselves. cut to the twentieth century, we had mr. hitler trying to turn berlin into one major ejaculation of personal ass-kissing, stalin tried to do it, but got destalinized after his death, and of course we have the body of chairman mao (is it one, two, three or four of them?) on tian'anmen square, with long lines of people paying their last respect, even thirty years after his passing.

and so now we have personal glorification on a slightly smaller and less lethal level. i haven't tried it, but google-ing for 'one-person shrine' or 'ass-kissing through video' and you might just find the chicago-based company.

written over the pacific #1

oh, the lady was flying to la to interview benicio del toro, who was - yes i'm not kidding - the high-school sweetheart of the person subject in the video (a google-hotshot).

and if you want to read more about people with power or money trying to glorify theirselves, try reading 'the edifice complex' by deyan sudjic.

of course i don't want to blow up this plane - i think religious violence is for retards.

2006-10-30T07:23:00.000+01:00

short as possible summary of all the 'security' measures i had to face flying from beijing to la through tokyo.

1. check-in luggage control: have to open everything, take it out of my bag. chinese people don't care about the number of illegal dvd-copies, knock-off super-a class counterfeit bags and fake converse shoes you pack, as long as there's a seal on your bag that says 'security checked'.

2. check-in interview: 'why are you going to the states?' 'where has your baggage been?' and so on and so on.

3. passport control. back in the days, when this was just it....

4. first security check - for american flights only. friend i was traveling with had to hand in all her liquid stuff, mascara and make-up, while the old lady in front of me was allowed to take hers with her, together with her pliers and scissors. summary executions seem less random. laptop x-rayed seperately.

5. second security check, at the gate - 'please step out of the line sir' sure, whatever, not that i have any choice... they take my carry-on bag apart, metal detect me, and check my shoes. i want to meet the first person that can pack anything in the soles of a converse that is not durt picked up from the street...

add. passengers also have to fill in a customs form leaving the country. xeroxing the one you have to fill in upon entering is apparently beyond beijings grasp.

6. in tokyo: security check in the transfer area. laptop not removed from my bag, nobody asked for it.

7. after the gate, another hauling of the bag, and surprise: again no bomb in my bag!

8. standing in line for us customs for an hour, and when its my turn, the customs guys needs to take a number two because he 'takes this medicine for his stomach which makes him go number two multiple times a day'.

whatever.

written over the pacific #2

Dutch homes, American homes

2006-10-11T20:43:00.000+02:00

what is considered wrong or even fascist in the netherlands, according to 'educated' architects and architecture students, is the hot stuff in the states. yes, i'm talking about 'new tradition', 'regional historialism' or 'modern traditionalism'. in the netherlands, it looks like this.

people love it. we dutch tried to counter the 'debilization' of home owners by filling up subdivision like ypenburg by over-designed homes, that make all the magazines but apparently still don't really work.

and in the states, they build it like this.

is it still our job to decide what's hot or not? or should we really be servants to the people's wishes?

read this: designing america (wall street journal, oct. 6)

urban wasteland & natural refuge - a journey through time and space

2006-10-11T02:07:00.000+02:00

you can say what you want about Los Angeles, but one thing is true. the amount of asphalt, roads and highways do allow you to go anyplace in a reasonable amount of time. Compared to the Netherlands, where a trip from Rotterdam to Amsterdam (about 55 miles) feels like an eternity, driving around in LA feels like a short ride.

You never leave the city. driving around for 3 hours and only seeing houses, parking garages and strip malls is possible. and then you haven't seen the same place twice.

another admirable feature of LA is the possibility, thanks to all that asphalt, to go from a crazy urban wasteland to rugged, untouched nature. a few months ago I had a conversation with a guy that had lived in Los Angeles for more than ten years, and lives in Amsterdam now. we agreed on the nice things of Amsterdam, but what he really liked LA for was exactly this almost schizophrenic quality of the city of angels.

man has tried to civilize and 'asphaltize' Los Angeles for more than two hundred years, but places where he has failed to do so are plentiful. and finally, man has realized that these places need to be cherished, be cleaned and be left alone. don't see it as a defeat, see it as a reckoning of our own boundaries.

can you imagine?

>> 40 minutes >>

stupid rules, paid for by stupid people

2006-09-25T10:18:00.000+02:00

last night, in da club (as we like to say on da eastside, across the river), two 'o clock am sharp, i was once again confronted with one of LA's most absurdly executes laws: no alcohol after two.

don't get me wrong, i do understand the apparent necessity for this rule. after all, we don't want all them drunkards hittin' the road all at once, creating rampage on the asphalt. stop at two, give them another two hours to cool down and everybody is happy.

it itches in the implementation of the rule.

cut. back to the club, 2 am. i am enjoying my freshly purchased coke, when this guy, type muscle brain, walks up to me and asks me if i am going to drink the drink. it goes a little something like this:

him, big guy > you gonna drink that?

me, small guy > i thought so, yeah.

big guy > now?

small guy > well, i'd like to take my time...

big guy > now?

small guy > you want me to down it? i can't down a glass of coke on command, it's nasty.

big guy > it's the law, if not, the cops show up and close the joint down. so give it.

small guy > the law is nasty.

now the big guy takes the coke from the small guy and tosses it in the trash.

i love this country.

---

see: the DFA DJ tour 2007

watch: best in show (2000)

let's just privatize the ish out of it...

2006-09-23T01:01:00.000+02:00

... and leave other parts to rot.

that's todays theme. some of you might have heard of it, others not. it's called skidrow and it is the shit. the smelly shit.

what is basically is, next to the shit, is a bunch of homeless people living on the streets. not the back alleys but the middle of downtown los angeles. anybody who has read "city of quartz" by mike davis might have an idea of it, but it actually is much worse.

imagine yourself on a music festival, say pukkelpop (my most recent festival experience). you are on the campsite, and it's full of people living in a rather rudimentary fashion. tents, caravans and a few motorhomes. but only for three days, four at most. now, cut back to downtown LA. it is like pukkelpop, but more permanent and nastier.

it really makes me wonder what decision lead to such a strange urban appearance. apparently, skidrow is moving. and what is moving it? right, money. slowly but surely downtown is being repopulated again by the more wealthy and more creative part of society. they just don't want any bums on their doorstep.

not only rem koolhaas is going east, the homeless are also on an eastward course. how long for them to cross the LA river?

on the other hand, we have redondo beach.

you have the sea, you have the beach AND you have the seaside open-air swimming pool. pay up bitch! and there is no other option. for next to the beach you have this.

see you next time.

The war on terror: new deal '06

2006-09-06T18:44:00.000+02:00

not only is the war on terror costing a lot of lives on all sides, both good and evil, it is also, praise the lord, generating a lot of jobs. jobs you'd, say ten years ago, would think of as impossible. cfdr would still be alive, he would turn over in his grave...

so here's the top something of useless jobs in the name of freedom and democracy.

1. the inevitable garbage-can checker. this one actually exists. they look sharp, they are fast paced and they look if there are no dirty bombs in the trashcan you just threw your empty coke bottle in.

2. the shoelace official. 'is this a normal shoelace, sir?' if you dare to say no, get yourself ready for a nice interview in some dodgy backroom.

3. k-9 interrogator. for all your subversive bff's.

4. the embedded journalist. aka 'i forgot the golden rule of journalism'. be independent or be square, please.

that's it. in the air inbetween chi city and the city of angels.

#2. wikipedia is for suckers and i love it.

2006-09-04T02:44:00.000+02:00

issue number one. this is my second post, and since the first one was just a startup, let's clear the books, go tabula rasa and consider this the first one.

since a blog is useless if there's nothing to discuss or nothing interesting on it (i don't care where you have been, or what food your cat has eaten; i absolutely do not care how a coffee machine makes a nice cup of coffee and i certainly do not want to know how long it takes for a certain material to release one drop of something) i make the statement right here and right now. if you don't care about anything, do not read this blog... if you are interested in everyday observations about everyday things, you might find this interesting. if not, no pun.

anyway, back to the topic. and today's topic is wikipedia. i used to work as a student-assistent at my university in delft. one of my jobs was maintaining and updating the chair's wikipedia account. this basically meant writing stories on underground construction technologies, tunneling work and built underground structures. sounds pretty boring, but fortunately wikipedia is not only an online encyclopedia, it is also a community of social rejects.

just pressing the 'random article' button a few times, and you end up with the most obscure items possible. fun to read, but even more fun to watch the reactions. in wikiworld, you have obsessive-compulsive attraction seekers (bit like bloggers i guess), you have people who like to abuse their powers and you have, well, just call them losers. people that never had anything to say, nobody to have to listen to them and nobody who cared about them.

for them, wikipedia is a 21st century saviour. its openness gives them a place to ventilate all their obsessions and passions. and other people to condemn them. go forth and intensify. go to wikipedia.org and see for yourself. one tip: look for 'fancrud' and you'll have a great time for sure.

issue number two. in two days i am leaving for los angeles, to live there for six months. i don't feel anxious about it. is this a bad thing or something very general? i don't know, but i'd like to.

and then the usual linkbombing at the end.

read: republish

watch: subtopia

listen&watch: justice vs simian - we are your friends

good night.

start up

2006-08-16T00:45:00.000+02:00

right here, behind or in front my computer, new order's krafty (the glimmers dub version) in my headphone, thinking about what to write.

tomorrow i'm leaving for pukkelpop, crazy festival in belgium. think that's it for tonight.

sweet dreams.