mandag 14. februar 2011

One mans dream...



Henry Ford, one of the richest men in the world, didn't just want to be a maker of cars — he wanted to be a maker of men. He thought he could perfect society by building model factories and pristine villages to go with them. And he was pretty successful at it in Michigan. But in the jungles of Brazil, he would ultimately be defeated. In 1928, he established a prefabricated industrial town in the Amazon rainforest.
It was called "Fordlandia”.
Ford wanted his own supply of rubber for The Ford Motor Company in the US and thats the reason why he built this. Fordlandia isn't just the story of a plantation; it's a story about Ford's ego. Not one drop of latex from Fordlandia ever made it into a Ford car.
Ford basically tried to impose mass industrial production on the diversity of the jungle, but it seemed to be an impossible task, as the Amazon is one of the most complex ecological systems in the world and Ford relied mainly on indegenious workers on the plantations who had none botanical education. Ford’s vision was a replica Midwestern town, with modern plumbing, hospitals, schools, sidewalks, tennis courts and even a golf course. There would be no drink or other forms of immorality, but gardening for all and chaste dances every week. The workers where given something which for them where unfamiliar food such as hamburgers and sloppy joes, they were forced to live in American-style housing and they truly disliked the way they were treated — they had to wear ID badges at all times and work midday hours under the tropical sun and as a result; they would often refuse to work and revolt. Instead of the picket-fenced utopia in the Amazon that Mr.Ford dreamed about it turned into something complete different; Ford forbade alcohol and tobacco within the town, including inside the workers' own homes. The inhabitants circumvented this prohibition by paddling out to merchant riverboats moored beyond town jurisdiction and a settlement was established five miles upstream on the "Island of Innocence" with bars, nightclubs and brothels.
No matter how much you try to enclose people the parias in a society will allways seek out to establish theiere own reality.
Looked upon as a complete failure, Fordlandia was abandonded in 1945, due to the development of synthetic rubber.
So, conclusion; one mans utopia aint necessary the next mans…

mandag 7. februar 2011

When snow gets a function


The snowdeposit on Åsland was established in autumn 2006, with paving and drainage, and is the only landfill Samferdselsetaten have in Oslo. When the landfill is full, its been dumped about 250,000 cubic meters of snow here, which is estimated to be about 12 000 truck loads full of snow.
Snow removed from the roads is significantly contaminated by road salt, metals and organic pollutants, but if the landfills are designed appropriately it can reduce the spread of pollutants. The main sources of the contamination is wear of the road, tires, brakes and exhaust. Previously, large amounts of the snow was dumped into the harbor every winter, but because of unwanted litter and growth in the sediments, this was stopped, and the landfill was established instead. The snow that’s been cleared from the streets of the iner city includes both garbage, particles such as sand and gravel, various salts, oil, and not least significant amounts of pollutants. Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) has estimated that winter 93/94 the snow dumped in the sea added Bispevika (the sea) in Oslo about 1000 tonnes of particulates, 60 kg zinc, 29 kg lead, 20 kg copper, 20 kg chromium, 8 kg PAH and 7.5 tonnes of oil. The snow also contained in the order of 50-190g of the highly hazardous environmental exposure to PCBs.
The massive amount of snow doesn’t melt untill september and may be looked upon as a man made glacier. The transportation of this large amount of snow contributes to a lot of polution from the trucks and also an extra pressure on the road system. In an interlocked local system are there any other ways to solve this?
The content of pollutants in the melted water means it must pass through a treatment plant before it can be released. In the current energy debate it is an important step in making energy use more environmentally friendly. It is important not to forget the cooling demand in this debate. Many commercial buildings and office space has a great need for cooling in summer. At Grønland, a lot of the buildings are solely commercial buildings that’s dependent on heatreducing airconditioning systems, whats the possibillity for the establishment of local snowdeposits which can be connected with the established building mass. A project in Sweden, the hospital of Sundsvall have established such a system; The hospital has a large need for cooling in summer. The air outside are often of 25 degrees, so it is necessary to lower the temperature. This requires a lot of energy in such a large building. This unique project aims to reduce energy consumption, save money and stop all use of freon in the cooling system.

The snow collected from clearing the areas around the hospital, app. 30,000 m3 of snow will be stored on a 7,000 m2 large area. In late April, when theres enough snow, it is covered by wood chips or sawdust. The snow will then be placed under the insulating layer, and slowly begin to melt in May.
The melted water then has a temperature of approx. 1 plus degree and this is pumped through a heat exchanger. Air pumped into the heat exchanger will be reduced to around 20 degrees. After the melted water has passed through the heat exchanger it is sent back to the snowdeposit with a temperature of approx. 15 ° C. The water helps to melt the new snow, which is then pumped back to the hospital again. This cycle continues until all snow has melted.

lørdag 5. februar 2011

the perfect totalitarian city


sim city, the "urbanizing" computergame wich allows each and everyone of us to act out our godlike tendencies in the comfort of our own home has reached a new level. By close examination of the game mechanics and the capacity of each and every tile its been theorized and formulated the most effective structure which would maximize the total capability of population a tile can hold. Its the creation of the perfect totalitarian city.

exploited privacy


a link to a site posting screenshots from google earth/streetview, a glimpse into how certain individuals somewhere in the world choose to act on a certain given time. Even though sites like this enables us to get an impression of what reality looks like through lenses like this its still just that; an impression.

torsdag 3. februar 2011

Decaying dioramas


If the surroundings are too pristine for your gritty soul, do like artist Lori Nix, Beatyshop,2010, spend months creating a diorama and take snaps of it...

labyrinth of egypt



Described as one of the great, lost enigmas in the history of the world, the lost labyrinth of Egypt was a colossal temple with 3000 rooms full of hieroglyphs and paintings. A legendary building lost for two thousand years under the ancient sands of Egypt. Herodotus, the ancient greek historian, called the "father of history" (by some labeled 'The Father of Lies' because of his tendency to report fanciful information, nonetheless..) described it in 530 BC as a "labyrinth"; a building complex that he considered to surpass the pyramides in its astonishing ambition:
”It has twelve covered courts — six in a row facing north, six south — the gates of the one range exactly fronting the gates of the other. Inside, the building is of two storeys and contains three thousand rooms, of which half are underground, and the other half directly above them. I was taken through the rooms in the upper storey, so what I shall say of them is from my own observation, but the underground ones I can speak of only from report, because the Egyptians in charge refused to let me see them, as they contain the tombs of the kings who built the labyrinth, and also the tombs of the sacred crocodiles. The upper rooms, on the contrary, I did actually see, and it is hard to believe that they are the work of men; the baffling and intricate passages from room to room and from court to court were an endless wonder to me, as we passed from a courtyard into rooms, from rooms into galleries, from galleries into more rooms and thence into yet more courtyards. The roof of every chamber, courtyard, and gallery is, like the walls, of stone. The walls are covered with carved figures, and each court is exquisitely built of white marble and surrounded by a colonnade”
Still investigated, a belgium research team are now doing scans of the sand to reveal the truth.

solitary city



To play a solitary game of city is the equivalent of beeing alone in a city, in a place designed for beeing amongst others its regarded as lonesome to stay all by yourself, one is the loneliest number you can find some people say. The household statics in Oslo disagree with this conclusion; every fourth household in Norway consists of only one person. In Oslo, the proportion of the population over 16 who live alone is a total of 52 percent, or 150 000. Of these, 75 percent are women.

We find half of those living alone among the quarter of the population with the lowest incomes. Especially young people living alone are overrepresented in the low-income group. When students are excluded from this group( you know- we who seek knowledge must pay a high price for this; we don’t even deserve to be included in the group; “poor”…), the proportion of "poor" among citizens under 30 years who live alone is four times as high as the average of the population.

Housing costs for people living alone has increased by 40 percent since 1987, but the costs have only risen by 16 percent for others. The proportion of people living alone who own their own homes has also declined over the past 15 years.

In sum, living alone in Oslo means higher living costs per person than the average. Living alone in Oslo has a total consumption expenditure, which is 40 percent higher than people living alone outside the major cities.
You gotta pay the cost to be the boss/ its expensive to be the king in the castle.

tirsdag 1. februar 2011

window display


fooling around in the streets again, the interior becomes the exterior...

Lets look to Mecca..


New knowledge acquired about the park at Grønland. Vaterlandsparken, made infamous as a drugspot in this millenium was actually intended to surve a higher purpose; the park is located on the so-called mosque site, todays drugspot could have been a place for spiritual meaning and mindtravel in a less chemical way... In the architectural competition for Vaterland in 1982, the city had as a requirement that buildings and axes should relate to the direction towards Mecca that is required for the center axis in any mosque. The Oslo Spectrum and the Raddisson Plaza had to be regulated into this axis. The muslim congregation that pledged to build the mosque at this site later got financial problems and had to abandon the idea and instead we got Vaterlandsparken.

keyword


by chance, as I was reopening the blog for the season I took a look at the statistics showing who visited this blog and how they came across this little body of work... to no surprise; the winner is good ol fashioned S.E.X.X.X.X!! Nice to see what the public likes..haha

Irony?


After running the streets looking for the impact the snow displays on the cityscape its quite an irony to find my car hooked up to a towtruck due to illegal parking/ snowremoval...

New Appetite


"So thats another rule for the whole nature of architecture; it must actually create new appetites, new hungers- not solve problems; architecture is too slow to solve problems."
Cedric Price