Zoning for diversity As production becomes increasingly clean and knowledge-based, as our urban economies tip dramatically to service industries, as racism and ethnic animosities ebb, and as the model of mixed use becomes more and more persuasive and visible, cities are in a position to dramatically rethink zoning as a medium for leveraging and usefully complicating difference, rather than simply isolating it. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan zoningrace
Bridges as walls The biographer of Robert Moses, Robert A. Caro, refers to the bridges and underpasses of the famed New York State parkways. These bridges and underpasses are quite low, intentionally specified by Moses to allow only private cars to pass. All those who traveled by bus because they were poor or black or both were barred from the use and enjoyment of the parkland and its "public amenities" by the technical design of the bridges. Even at the time of Robert Moses, a political statement of the form "We don't want them blacks in our parks" would have been unacceptable in New York State. But a technological expression of the same prejudice appeared to be all right. Of course, to the public the intent of the design became evident only after it was executed, and then the bridges were there. Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology politicsclassracediscriminationurbanism
The Circus An Essay from Every So Often a Talking Dog Appears by Smiljan Radić EnduranceThere it is againPreparing a stage
Endurance For Alfred North Whitehead, a car accident and the exposure of a pyramid to the sun on any given day are equivalent events: We are accustomed to associate an event with a certain melodramatic quality. If a man is run over that is an event comprised within certain spatio-temporal limits. We are not accustomed to consider the endurance of the Great Pyramid throughout any definite day as an event. But the natural fact which is the Great Pyramid throughout a day, meaning thereby all nature within it, is an event of the same character as the man's accident, meaning thereby all nature with spatio-temporal limitations so as to include the man and the motor during the period when they were in contact. Alfred North Whitehead time
There it is again Apparently architecture does the same job as set design, "it creates units of environment, atmosphere, or events"—whatever you wish to call them—but with more weight, carrying more material, slower. This is why it can raise the curtain more times and repeat "there it is again" for longer. Perhaps for this and other reasons there are periods in the history of architecture in which stage design or the folly, for example, have been an effective field of experimentation for serious architects. Follies architecture
Preparing a stage When a client arrives at my studio, my job consists of preparing a "stage" for the length of time he desires, whether it be for a day or years, it is irrelevant in the end. A stage in which he can move under the sun "as if he were at home," though he walks stuttering at first before learning what will come in the script, be it kind or not, and which he will repeat a thousand times until he tires. When he tires, a panel is disassembled to readapt the children's room, the roof is demolished to make a study, the façades are decorated and life continues unperturbed. design