The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Slog: Architecture

The No Ground City

Charles Mudede — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:39:09 -0700

I want this book...

What it's about:

Hong Kong is a city without ground. In Hong Kong, it is possible to walk all day without ever having to set foot on the ground. "Cities Without Ground" deconstructs the unfathomable paths of pedestrian bridges, tunnels and walkways, which make up pedestrian Hong Kong. The book graphically dissects this labyrinth in a series of snappy axonometric drawings of 32 various routes through the city.

It's like one of those cities in Invisible Cities.

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Joy This Morning Arrives in the Form of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps and a New Algae-Powered Building in Hamburg

Charles Mudede — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:34:58 -0700

This video, which concerns this new and amazing building...

The world’s first algae-powered building just opened in Hamburg! Dubbed the BIQ House, the project features a bio-adaptive algae facade and it will serve as a testing bed for sustainable energy production in urban areas...

...is a keeper:

The alien bubbles in the wall; the angular trips on the piano—what more could you ask for? How I love the modern mood.

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Name This Building

Jen Graves — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:48:39 -0700

Hint: It's in Pioneer Square. Hint 2: It functions like a big terrarium. Sort of.

Also, this is not a test: I don't know what it is, so you'll be telling me. I saw it last night during art walk.

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Ten Years Ago Today, Tacoma's Art Museum Made of Mist Opened

Jen Graves — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:20:40 -0700

The dreamy New Mexico-based architect Antoine Predock always intended his silvery Tacoma Art Museum to dissolve into the sky. It worked so well that some people actually had trouble finding the place.

I loved this "problem." TAM was the opposite of the modified-phallic, extroverted Museum of Glass just across the waterway. And they were a pair.

Now, ten years later, Tacoma Art Museum is planning a big, heavy, earth-colored addition for its new Western art wing. Like that whole endeavor, the success or failure will be in the execution. If Western art means cowboys, we're in trouble. If this earthiness turns up drab or imperious, likewise. This will be Tom Kundig's first completed museum. The renderings don't thrill me.

Courtesy Tacoma Art Museum and Tom Kundig

I'm curious about what's going on in the middle area, where there's that screen that extends down to street level. Its back leg will block part of the glorious view out the top floor of TAM. Will it bisect Mount Rainier? Please tell me it will not. Probably that's a dumb question. Nobody would let that happen.

You can also see from the next rendering that the screen section creates a plaza where before there was only longing. Those figures-for-scale almost look like they're enjoying a feeling akin to standing outside at the Kennedy Center in DC, under that overhang with views to the water on one side and the street on the other—know what I mean? (The entrance always was the weakest moment of the building—its interior is a freaking wonder—and that was partly because the original design was "value-engineered" away, meaning they didn't raise enough money to make it happen.) Three cheers for a real entrance.

But what's with the brownie with blinds?

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Failure at the Beacon Hill Station?

Charles Mudede — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:48:55 -0700

I have nothing against the Beacon Hill Station (yes, it leaks; yes, the elevators are slow), but it recently occurred to me that the business directly above the pay stations is supposed to be, or wants to be, a green wall...

Is this right? It sure looks like it. There is something trying to grow on the side there. Does Seattle have another failed green wall? I will dig into the matter and have answers in the near future.

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Best Architecture Film of the Year Screens on Saturday

Charles Mudede — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:22:59 -0700

Reconversão, which is part of the Northwest Film Forum’s superb The Built World series, is about the work and theories of Eduardo Souto de Moura, a Portuguese architect who won the 2011 Pritzker Prize. The greatness of the documentary is found not just in the content (Moura’s buildings are just something else) but also in the fact that it’s narrated and directed by Thom Andersen—the film scholar and culture critic behind the long argument called Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003). The result of this encounter between two very different sensibilities (a European modernist and an American postmodernist) is one of the best films about architecture that has ever been made. What Andersen does is to present Moura without sounding academic or employing architectural language. The plainness of his English is like a window into the heart of a sophisticated artist. Do not miss the opportunity to watch this film. It's really happening.

The local architect Gordon Walker is introducing the screening! Get a ticket while they are still available.

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Seattle Finally Has a Train Station...

Charles Mudede — Thu, 02 May 2013 08:46:06 -0700

It took forever, but it's finally here; finally this part of Seattle and the old multimodal dream is coming together nicely...

The remodeling project was so slow that at one point (three years ago), I decided it was best to just demolish the whole damn thing. My thinking? Making something new might make us more excited.

At 12:50 p.m. today, the defeated mayor of Seattle climbed up to the 11th floor of the clock tower at King Street Station (a structure that should have been demolished instead of endlessly being renovated) and officially restarted the station’s long-dead clock. These are the words he offered for the sad occasion, sad because at the very moment life was returning to the clock was also the moment that life was leaving his mayorship: “For the first time in more than a decade, Seattleites can once again set their watches by the King Street Station clock.” (Yes, Nickels, we will now be able to see if the Global Positioning Systems's time synchronization for cellular phone networks is correct or not.) As the mayor descended the tower, step by step, the sound of time's ticking diminished.

Now we have to deal with the old tracks. We want our bullet trains between the big cities. This want needs new tracks. Obama talked about doing something about it years ago. But because Obama is only good at being the first black president and not much else, we continue to only hear talk about this upgrade. (To be fair, there has been some serious talk about high-speed rail in our region since 1992. Obama is only continuing this solid tradition of talking.)

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Penis, China

Jen Graves — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:18:29 -0700

You want, you got.

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A House for All Seasons

Charles Mudede — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:40:50 -0700

From the Dailymail:

There are houses for cold climates, which are designed to keep in the precious warmth; there are houses for hot climates where architecture allows for air to sweep through and keep inhabitants cool.
However, until now, the two were difficult to combine.
But this new incredible folding house is able to, in the words of its creators, 'metamorphosize' into eight different configurations to adapt to seasonal, meteorological and even astronomical conditions.

The Dynamic D*Haus by The D*Haus Company from Dezeen on Vimeo.

It's nice and all, but the future will not be saved by houses that can do tricks. The future is only waiting for those who live in the city and live in small apartments and live without cars. Houses have no future waiting for them. Houses are only here and will remain here where we are.

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Publishers' Weekly Hasn't Said Squat About My New Book

Chicago Fan — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:00:00 -0700

But you should pre-order it anyway!

Did you like Devil in the White City? Of course you did. Who doesn't? Chicago By Day and Night: The Pleasure Seeker's Guide to the Paris of America was a guidebook published for visitors to the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Daniel Burnham might've picked it up, though he's never once mentioned (the book was written before we began to worship architects as artists). H. H. Holmes's hotel might've rated a mention, had it been built when the book was composed. If you're a DitWC fan, this book will complement your enjoyment of Larsen's.

CBDN guides potential visitors to "free and easy" shows, saloons, carousels, masquerades, and other fun things to do away from the Fair itself. It's a fascinating artifact of the late 19th Century, when any woman who flirted with a man on the street might be an "adventuress" who planned to take him for all he was worth, via blackmail, the badger game, or the panel room. A taste from that chapter, with our notes after the jump:

The term adventuress is applied to women of careless reputation who, being much too smart to endure the ignominious career of professional demi-mondaines, resort to various shrewd schemes to fleece the unwary. Some of their class work in concert with male partners, and in such cases the selected victim generally becomes an easy prey. The confidence man may be dangerous; the confidence woman, if she be well educated and bright, as well as pretty, is irresistible except with the most hardened and unsusceptible customers. The shrewdest old granger of them all, who steers safely through the shoals and traps set for him by male sharpers, will go down like the clover before the scythe under a roguish glance, as it were, from a “white wench’s black eye,” as Mercutio said.
There is no mortal man in this universe of ours, be he never so homely or ill-favored, who does not cherish in his heart of hearts the impression that there is a woman or two somewhere whom he could charm if he wished to. It is the spirit of masculine vanity that forms the material upon which the adventuress may work. With the art of an expert she sizes up the dimensions of her victim’s vanity the instant she has made his acquaintance and plays upon it to just the extent she deems expedient and profitable. If it were not for masculine vanity, the American adventuress could not exist.

Along with my colleague Paul Durica, I've introduced, edited and annotated this fascinating bit of history. Some key features you might like: lots of dirty jokes, along with serious economic history (the chapter on gambling, for instance, includes the Chicago Board of Trade as just another way to lose your shirt, along with back-alley craps games or faro banks in saloons). Reminders of how cities change, and how they stay the same. Very cool illustrations, and lots of double-entendres (watch for the "delicious lays").

But all in the service of scholarship. Pre-order! Use the code DURICA13 for a discount.

This chapter outlines the three primary methods used by female con artists, and/or crooked prostitutes, to make money, in descending order from genteel blackmail to the badger game to the panel room. Just as a con man presenting an out-of-town visitor with a chance for some easy money requires his mark to cooperate, a con woman depends on her victim’s sexual desire and vanity to put him in a place where he will pay her off or be robbed. The emphasis placed throughout the chapter on not trusting any woman one meets for the first time in a public place continues the theme of gendered spaces in the city: women on their own in public were an erotic opportunity, a physical threat, or both. Blackmail would simply involve threatening to expose a man’s indiscretions to his family or business partners back home. The badger game involves a fake husband or other outraged man demanding satisfaction for his dishonor (see Nelson Algren’s “Design for Departure” in The Neon Wilderness for a story about a couple playing the badger game). The panel game was more straightforward robbery, although the writer here neglects to mention that this last ploy would not happen with a supposed dalliance but during prostitution. Some brothels were constructed with rooms furnished with only a bed and single chair. The man would leave his clothes on the chair, and as our author delicately puts it, “while the interview between the more or less affectionate lovers is in progress,” the woman’s compatriot would slide the panel back and steal the man’s watch, money, and other valuables. The customer could not complain (if he even noticed before leaving the “establishment”) because doing so would mean admitting he’d patronized a prostitute, and the brothel would have both paid-off police protection and on-site bouncers in any case.

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A Building and a Bicycle

Bethany Jean Clement — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:25:10 -0700

Charles has serially waxed rhapsodic about the supergreen Bullitt Center, which is grand-opening at 15th and Madison, where C.C. Attle’s used to be, right this very moment. Indeed, it is impressive. More importantly to my bicycle, part of the grand opening is free bike repair, carried out on the spot by a very nice man named Matt, who runs the Polka Dot Jersey bicycle shop in Leschi. (The reference is to the winner in the climbing stages of the Tour de France—if you can demonstrate any knowledge about this, Matt will be gratified.) My bike had been changing gears all on its own, as if by an unseen hand, or indeed, as if there were a ghost in—or on—the machine. Matt remedied this situation in approximately four minutes, and also added air to my tires, changing the relationship of my bicycle—indeed, my very self—to the road.

The point here is: This building may be beautiful, it may be green, it may know when to shade its own windows, it may have composting toilets, but this building has done me a concrete service—you might even say a service involving concrete itself. The building has also, for a brief moment on a sunny day, thrown off the shackles of capitalism, escaped the unseen hand of the market, giving this concrete service that at any other time requires payment in kind for no kind of payment at all. This is a thing that changes one's relationship to architecture.

It is unclear how long Matt will be there, but go now, and change your bicycle's world.

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Tour the New Bullitt Center Today!

Charles Mudede — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:30:57 -0700

The speechs by the mayor and other important people are over...

The greenest commercial office building in the world is open to the public between now, noonish, and 5 pm (15th and Madison)...

Brett Renville

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The Amazing Bullitt Center: Part Three

Charles Mudede — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:05:25 -0700

Today is Earth Day. Today the greenest commercial building in the world opens to the public in Seattle. The opening begins at 11 am. Now, I want you to read this description of the Bullitt Center by Denis Hayes, the head of the Bullitt Foundation:

It does not look at all like a douglas-fir forest but it is like a douglas-fir forest. The impact it has on this site is pretty much the same as a douglas-fir forest had on this site 200 years ago. The douglas-fir got all of its energy from the sun through photosynthesis, it gets its energy from the sun through photovoltaics. The forest supported a complex ecosystem; there’s a complex ecosystem in the building. The forest got water and disposed it in the ground, this building does the same for the most part. It disposes most of its water not in the bay but in the ground.

Now look at this image of the building, which was taken by Brad Kahn...

Though it tries to function like a forest, it does not try to look like one. But if the architect firm, Miller Hull, did try to make the building look like a forest, with its deep greens and dark browns, the building would then be in the same sad sphere as that one on Beacon Hill.

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There's a New Old Park in the Neighborhood

Unpaid Intern — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:35:00 -0700

Posted by intern Madeline Reddington.

The Bullitt Foundation is warming up for its opening on Earth Day (Monday), and the renovations to triangular McGilvra Place (created in 1901) were finished this afternoon.

Madeline Reddington
The newly transformed McGilvra Park.

While the grass is totally gone, it looks like it may turn out to be a nice spot for a lunch or coffee on some of the tree-stump furniture that's been added. That is, if the constant flow of traffic down Madison Street doesn't bother you.

Another picture after the jump.

Madeline Reddington
The stairs weave nicely into the ground cover.

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The Amazing Bullitt Center: Part Two

Charles Mudede — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:05:29 -0700

The glass staircase on the side of the building that faces Madison Street...

JOHN STAMETS

My words in the A&P:

This is a remarkable staircase. It’s enclosed in glass, and so the higher the floor, the better the view of the neighborhood and the city. Seattle on the sixth floor is something to behold—the office towers, the Space Needle, the blue sky or low clouds, depending on the day. Like every nut, bolt, and plank, in this building, thought went to into the decision to make a glass staircase. The thinking: The elevator continually adds to the energy costs of the building; stairs, once completed, once built, do not. But people naturally prefer not to use their own energy to get around but to exploit the energy of something else—a car, a rickshaw, an elevator. How do you solve this conflict? Make the convenience of using something else’s energy lower than the reward of expending your own. In the Bullitt, that reward is the spectacular view in the glass-enclosed staircase.

It’s fair to consider the public opening of the Bullitt Center, which is this Monday (April 22, at 11 am), as the most important architectural event in our city since the completion of the Olympic Sculpture Park in 2007, which in turn was the most important architectural event since the completion of the building that made Rem Koolhaas a star, the Central Library, in 2004.

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A Seattle Without Billboards?

Charles Mudede — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:07:08 -0700

São Paulo did it five years ago and the city is doing just fine with absolutely no outdoor advertisements...

Imagine a city of 11 million inhabitants stripped of all its advertising. It’s nearly impossible when the clutter and color of our current urban landscapes seem inextricably entwined with the golden arches of McDonald’s or the deep reds of Coca-Cola.

Yet for the residents of São Paulo, Brazil, this doesn’t require imagination: city dwellers simply have to walk down the street and look around to see a city devoid of advertisements.

In September 2006, São Paulo’s populist mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called “Clean City Law," outlawing the use of all outdoor advertisements, including on billboards, transit, and in front of stores.

All of this brings to mind the beauty of Lead Pencil Studio's "Non-Sign":

The image is from a feature written by Jen Graves.

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The Amazing Bullitt Center: Part One

Charles Mudede — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:03:58 -0700

Here is one thing you might not know about the Bullitt Center, which has its grand opening on Monday, April 22, at 11 a.m. The building's large windows are intelligent.

John Stamets

If you pop one open for fresh air, the window waits for about 30 or so minutes and, realizing that you have forgotten about it, forgotten that it is open, forgotten that this openness wastes energy, it quietly closes itself behind your back. What a lovely image that is: A window secretly closing itself. Indeed, you can almost see the sudden reduction of street sounds as it shuts with robotic ease. Public tours of the very green building begin an hour after a ribbon is cut at 11 a.m.

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This Just In! Charles Mudede Does Not Like the Beacon Hill Library

Christopher Frizzelle — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:07:17 -0700

And commenters already do not like his not liking it. Representative comment: "This article was so fucking stupid, second only to the cloud article from last year."

I disagree. You gotta read it. It begins:

You have seen this before. An immigrant is having a drink by himself at a bar. He is enjoying his day off. He works so hard for his money. He is giving himself a little treat by not ordering the cheapest beer. He is dressed in some of his best threads and wears with pride a hat that's a bit fancy—it's a safari Panama straw fedora. Suddenly, a group of drunken white men burst into the bar. They are loud and laugh at anything that falls from their mouths. As one of them requests a bucket of beer (it's party time!) from the bartender, another begins to show great interest in the immigrant's exotic hat. "Man, that's really cool," the white man says to the immigrant. The immigrant smiles weakly and continues drinking. "Can I try it?" asks the white man. But before the immigrant even gives him an answer, the man grabs the hat, puts it on his own head, and begins to move his neck back and forth like a funky chicken. "Man, I should buy one of these. It's so cool."

You have seen this sort of thing before. You have seen it and felt your soul cringe, felt it crinkle like tinfoil. Oh no, he didn't. Oh yes, he did—and he just won't stop doing his jive thing with the rim of the hat low on his eyes.

Keep that image in your mind and now think about the Beacon Hill Library...

Columbia City and the Brand New Race

Charles Mudede — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:49:24 -0700

In the future, the final race will be every race...

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Tonight at Hedreen Gallery: The Politics and Spaces of Public Wilderness

Charles Mudede — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:29:17 -0700

Here is a preview...

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The Always Ugly Beacon Hill Branch Library: Part IV

Charles Mudede — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:29:45 -0700

I'm beginning to realize that the Beacon Hill Library is not only ugly but is actually getting uglier. It has gotten so bad that when ever pass it, to avoid unbalancing my spirits, to prevent my thoughts from slipping into the gloom that this kind of architecture was built for, I have to look across the street and fix as much attention as possible on the vivid mural on the Beacon Hill branch of Washington Federal. This is a small part of that useful distraction...

Did you know that the western section of the library looks like the back of an armadillo? What a monster this building is, and, sadly, not a hopeful monster.

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The Contradiction of the Suburb

Charles Mudede — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 08:47:28 -0700

Just as the inner city is being improved for pedestrians, cyclists, and those who use public transportation, the poor are being pushed out to places that are hostile to these cheaper forms of transportation. David Moser at City Tank breaks it down:

Though poverty poses dire and unjust challenges no matter where it exists, sprawling and auto-dependent land use patterns can exacerbate these difficulties. And this problem is gaining urgency, as more and more of America’s low-income individuals now live in suburbs (or are being pushed there), a phenomenon the Brookings Institute has called “the suburbanization of poverty”.

There are many reasons suburbs make the experience of poverty worse, but first among them is that automobiles are really expensive. Purchasing, maintaining, repairing, insuring, and fueling a car can easily consume 50% or more of a limited income. For someone struggling to work themselves out of poverty, these expenses can wreck havoc on even the most diligent efforts to maintain a monthly budget. With gas now approaching or exceeding $4.00/gallon, a full day’s work at minimum wage sometimes won’t pay for a single tank of gas. The burdens of sprawl weigh heaviest on the poor.

One of the major challenges for the urban environmentalist movement is to make green living affordable. The way things are heading at the moment, however, we can expect what happened to health foods to happen to our neighborhoods.

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The City and the Land

Charles Mudede — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:16:12 -0700

The project is called Landgrab City. It's located in downtown Shenzhen. It's by Joseph Grima, Jeffrey Johnson, and José Esparza. The small blackish section at the corner represents the city (Shenzhen), and the rest represents the area needed to feed this city. Shenzhen has a population of 10,000,000. If a social engineer hopes to meaningfully transform his/her society, then he/she must first strength its inhabitants sense of cognitive mapping. Without an adequate big picture, a mental sense of where things are and how each thing relates to other things and places, the citizen will be no better than an ant and the city will be just a hive of unrelated and unthinking individuals.

As for urban agriculture, Havana is the city of the future...

Havana, Cuba, is a world leader in urban agriculture. After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, food production was decentralised from large mechanised state farms to urban cultivation systems. Today more than 50 per cent of Havana’s fresh produce is grown within the city limits, using organic compost and simple irrigation systems.

50 percent! The 16th century Dutch philosopher Spinoza once wrote that no one knows what the body can do. The same goes with the city: No one knows what it can do. As Havana was abandoned by communism, Detroit was abandoned by capitalism. What the inhabitants of each of these cities were left with was nothing but the city itself, and they had to discover what it can do.

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London's Daytime Population

Charles Mudede — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:03:49 -0700

Most striking of all is the City of London, which has 11,700 residents but a daytime population of 390,000...

The Marxist economist Michael Roberts writes:

The City of London itself is like a large aircraft carrier sitting on the Thames, which provides work for thousands (including thousands of non-Brits) and who avoid as much as possible going into the ‘heart of darkness’ that they see as the rest of the British Isles.

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From King Street Station to Dongguan

Charles Mudede — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:06:21 -0700

One of the many replicas of the Campanile of St. Mark's Square appears in China's copycat architecture craze...

The other replicas...

The original Campanile inspired the designs of other towers worldwide, especially in the areas belonging to the former Republic of Venice. Almost identical, albeit smaller, replicas of the campanile exist in the Slovenian town of Piran and in the Croatian town of Rovinj; both were built in the early 17th century. Other, later replicas include the clock tower at King Street Station in Seattle; North Toronto Station; Brisbane City Hall, Australia; the Rathaus (Town Hall) in Kiel Germany; the Daniels & Fisher Tower in Denver; the Campanile in Port Elizabeth- South Africa; Sather Tower, nicknamed the Campanile, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley; 14 Wall Street; and the right-hand bell-tower of St. John Gualbert in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

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Suyama Space's Garage Sale Is Back

Jen Graves — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:10:56 -0700

COURTESY OF MUSEUM FÜR NATURKUNDE, BERLIN
Did I hear you say janky ocelot? Okay, it's true—at Suyama Space, you'd end up with the good ocelot.

Let us assume that when it comes to furniture, design, objets d'art, textiles, and antiques, you are more fabulous than your budget. If such is the case, you'll want to visit Suyama Space's garage sale this Friday (9 am-5 pm), Saturday (10-4), and Sunday (10-4). It's back by popular demand after a two-year hiatus.

Suyama Space is the nonprofit installation gallery inside the architectural firm Suyama Peterson Deguchi. It's gorgeous and strange and gorgeous things live there. (Read that sentence either way you choose; both ways are true.) Plus, you will see good art for free, art involving concrete spaceships and spindly arches like torn-off spider legs trying to walk on their own.

Garage-sale purchases are cash only. Questions? Email Emma.

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The All City

Charles Mudede — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 08:28:32 -0700

PSFK:

Mendis and Hsiang have embarked on a project to map out the entire world, as one city. They see the globe as an a single urban entity — for instance, impact from cities spreads out to the rural farming areas who feed them — so we should start visualizing it as such. The project will bring together disparate data such as population growth, economic indicators, topography and more to create a comprehensive geo-spatial model of the world.

Here is the video of that project:

But what do I see in all of this? The emergence of a new form of consciousness. There used to be a time when humans would make progress by way of the great individual, the new type of mind that connected the dots and revealed some unexpected aspect of reality. My feeling is that the great individual mode has been exhausted. The complexity of the human world, the terrific speed of its cultural evolution, and its intensifying metabolic relationship with nature, which Marx described as the universal (the general is production, the particularities are how wealth is distributed, and singularities are consumers) can only be grasped or processed by something much larger than the great individual, by something like a truly social intelligence. Networked cities might be to this globalized awareness what neurons are to the mind of the brain.

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NYC Is Still the Place to Be

Charles Mudede — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 07:54:12 -0700

Inhabitat:

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that New York City’s population is the highest it’s been in over 60 years, with more people moving in than moving out for the first time in decades. According to data derived from the US Census Bureau, 161,000 more people have begun calling the city home in the past two years (an increase of 2 percent). So what does this mean for NYC’s economy, resources and housing situation? Read on to find out.

Read more: New York City Population is Highest It's Been in Over 60 Years | Inhabitat New York City
NYC has grown by more than 300,000 residents since Bloomberg took office and this continued growth may continue to spur under Bloomberg’s micro-apartment housing plans, which aim to provide affordable living for city dwellers. The MTA also reported that ridership for 2012 reached 1.654 billion people, which marked the highest it’s been in 62 years. Weekend ridership also grew by three percent.

This is a good thing for the environment. Moving into NYC is a green thing to do. Also, Bloomberg's micro-apartment project points in the direction of true democracy and the only realistic future for humans. To make it as a species means living in cities, living without cars or smaller cars, and living with less private space and more public space.

What's happening at our own Videré (the micro-apartments on 23rd) has to happen everywhere. Seattle Times:

[Tenants] get a single bed, table, chair and refrigerator. They won't get a closet, a private kitchen — or very much space. The 46 rooms range in size from 90 to 168 square feet, including the bathroom, according to plans filed with the city.

Potter says many younger people now don't do much more than sleep in their apartments anyway. "You have a living room somewhere else," he says — perhaps a bar or coffee shop.

The living room will be the city.

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How Can We Stop Frank Gehry?

Charles Mudede — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:56:21 -0700

Something again crawled out of the sea, rolled over, and died...

And it's not just that Gehry's architecture is ugly but it's empty. Like the word "excellence," it has no meaning. And something that has no meaning is striving for political neutrality. And political neutrality is the desired result of projects funded by those in positions of power, like developers and pro-business associations. It promotes the idea or illusion that there are things in capitalist society that are universal, natural, that can be shared or enjoyed by all with no consequences. Those in power want us to believe such neutral social spaces and practices exist within the limits of the market; what this means is that the tools for transforming this type of society are to be found inside and not outside of it. One such tool/solution is carbon trading. I hate Gehry.

The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Slog: Architecture

The No Ground City

Joy This Morning Arrives in the Form of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps and a New Algae-Powered Building in Hamburg

Name This Building

Ten Years Ago Today, Tacoma's Art Museum Made of Mist Opened

Failure at the Beacon Hill Station?

Best Architecture Film of the Year Screens on Saturday

Seattle Finally Has a Train Station...

Penis, China

A House for All Seasons

Publishers' Weekly Hasn't Said Squat About My New Book

A Building and a Bicycle

Tour the New Bullitt Center Today!

The Amazing Bullitt Center: Part Three

There's a New Old Park in the Neighborhood

The Amazing Bullitt Center: Part Two

A Seattle Without Billboards?

The Amazing Bullitt Center: Part One

This Just In! Charles Mudede Does Not Like the Beacon Hill Library

Columbia City and the Brand New Race

Tonight at Hedreen Gallery: The Politics and Spaces of Public Wilderness

The Always Ugly Beacon Hill Branch Library: Part IV

The Contradiction of the Suburb

The City and the Land

London's Daytime Population

From King Street Station to Dongguan

Suyama Space's Garage Sale Is Back

The All City

NYC Is Still the Place to Be

How Can We Stop Frank Gehry?

Where We Live Now