On squatting

Just thought I would share this little instructional piece on “how to squat” based on our conversations in class.

Check here first, on freegan.info
Hope that works, or try here

I have been reading a book outlining the different stages of thoughts and theories of Otto Neurath.  I have only read a small amount of it, but he is a old-goon urbanist active in the early 1900′s and advocated for a communal or cooperative economy, one that “capiutalized on the bureaucratic infrastructure of the modern metropolis while still leaning heavily on the power of grassroots organizations and informal squatter communities”.  I think its really interesting, he is from Vienna but worked more mainly in Germany, and was influenced greatly by the way gypsies interacted with the city.  Another thing he starts to talk about is something called “gypsie urbanism” and “self-help urbanism”, but I haven’t gotten too deep into that. Also, his biggest influence academically is Tonnies, who himself was inspirational during the formation of the Garden City Movement in Germany.

Neurath, in general, seems to agree with the Ravets/Turkington reading in the importance these squatting, transient groups play in the urban sphere.  The reading ends by noting the differences between self-help housings provisions, one being getting homes for people the system does not serve and the other for people with alternative lifestyles.  From what I read in Neurath, he has the same point (except he was writing in the 1920′s) that gypsies were important groups to pay attention to for the same reasons.  He takes it further, and talks about how to learn from the rpactices of gypsies and how gypsies communities also can hurt the city.  So, he takes the good and bad from both.  Surely, city governments can learn from self-help housing and learn to provide housing for these different groups of people.  But there must be a way that the market and the communities can meet and balance.

House as Symbol of Self, Clair Cooper reading

Coopers article on Jungarian psychologies of home showed us how we become comfrtable with our homes, making them our own by projecting “something of ourseles onto its physical fabric”.  I find this personalization of home quite interesting, especially in New York City’s apartment lifestyle.  I always had a fascination with the mass identity of large city life and the paradoxical way that though living in such small, identical apartments New Yorkers still can have such a strong sense of personal identity.  I am sort of in the midst of my own little photography project exploring this theme in the neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.  I walked down streets at began taking pictures of peoples doorways, and found when looked at together you can begin to see little ways in that people make the space their own.  Its interesting to see some of the smaller details like stickers, lamps, signs, and decor contrasted with larger installments like newer railings, different paint, larger windows, more elaborate doors, and different variations of steel and brass fixtures.

Here is a little example.

“man was a symbol-making animal long before he was a toolmaker”

These photos differ slightly from her reading where she believes “the high-rise apartment building is rejected by most Americans as a family home because, I would suggest, it gives one no territory on the ground, violates the archaic image of what a house is, and is percieved unconsciously as a threat to ones self-image as a seperate and unique personality”.  I would argue something differently with these pictures.  While not high rise apartment buildings, they are 3 and sometimes 3 family apartment buildings that represent different family values then the normal “archetype” American house.  Many of these apartments are owned by Chinese families or landlords, so that the front door is used by multiple families.  This means that sometimes these front steps represent more of a community or a culture then they do an American ideal.  Other of these apartments are owned by white or other minorities, and when they are it is almost clearly shown.  An American flag delineates a white family in one of my photos not shown.  The photos also make me think about how we cannot see inside of them, not very many picture windows here, and perhaps how the different manifestations of culture show a threatened-proud duplexity in relation to the outside world.

Week 6 – make up post

Week 6 – make up posts

It was interesting to discuss the role of women in the kitchen during this weeks discussions and readings.  The changing role of commercialization and consumerism played a role in the construction of housing, of the minimal dwelling, and of the efficient kitchen where women could make use of the new technologies and play a superior role in the making of food.  Whether or not this was an empowering technology or a way to cause women to remain domestic or be more domestic, is something that was debated in the texts.

The political nature of buildings, as Barbara Miller Lane says is always implicit, was shown to be criticized as early as 1910 in Germany by Walter Gropius.  Gropius looked at the poor state of buildings during that time and offered a series of solutions to improve the quality of structure and of life through the improvement of housing.  Lane then discusses the way in which the Weimar Republic of Germany from 1919 to 1945 advocated for a new revolutionary order that was expressed in the architecture that was created during this time period.  Its interesting to think of architecture as politically charged and it causes you to take a closer look at architecture today and what ideologies it represents.  In Germany, it was defending the rights of the common person to affordable housing that provided a good way of life.  Inside the minds of the culture and the architects were the beliefs of equality, not of competition that we tend to see in today’s housing markets.  They also, similar to bell hooks, saw the interior of the home as the birth place of social and cultural change.  Because of this belief, the interiors were also flooded with light, which in some places can be quite a luxury, and is also quite healthy.

Its fun to take such a historical viewpoint, which is a bit easier to write about and draw conclusions from, and to apply it to my own neighborhood in Brooklyn which is long gentrified.  The structures represent a mixture of new housing–some approachable in scale and some of the humongous and glass genre—and old rail road style apartments.  In the middle of these two building types–old and new–sits the converted factory loft, often expensive but without the pretense of the glass buildings.  If I were to describe them politically in the same order it would be as follows: brutal capitalism, historical and cultural preservation, and the left leaning liberal consumers.  But this could be argued, of course.

Week 3 make up post

Bachelard

I liked our class discussion on this piece, but the piece itself seems dated now that I am coming back to it.  She is describing housing during the 1940’s and makes a relationship between a houses vertical structure and its ideological structure.  To have a dream like house, is to experience both the attic and the cellar and what they both represent.  It simply doesn’t represent a modern viewpoint of home, with renovated basements and apartments with no storage.

But its an interesting viewpoint nonetheless.  You can apply this sort of vertical viewpoint of ideologies to modern cities to an extent.  Where the tallest structures are the office buildings and the most affluent work at the highest points above the city.  Likewise the cost of apartments can relate to their view and their height above ground level.  Lower and middle class generally occupy vertical spaces closer to the ground and rely on the underground train system to get around.  Thus you could make assumptions on what kind of “oneiric richness” exsists in both inside the urban landscape.  That’s the only way I can apply the reading to systems of housing in New York City, or one of the ways I suppose.

Colomina

It’s interesting to think about how Bachelard believes that the country house best exemplifies this oneiric house, while Loos sets up his design as the perfect environment, or stage, to embody all the activities of life.  Bachelard discusses the vertical assemblage as giving way to places of solitude and contemplation, “prison and refuge”.  While Colomina tells about Loos believing his homes were best for the variations of life to exist, from birth, to life, to death.  When speaking about vernacular, these are two conflicting ideas of what necessitates a sound home.  But similar in that they agree in what constitutes a home.

Week 1, Lloyd Wright and Rapoport

Week one: Who interprets? Make up post

Here is the first of many make up posts that I read over Spring break.

I first just wanted to comment on the Frank Lloyd Wright reading from Week one.   Its interesting to read something form his own words and how authoritative he is on all these architectural matters.  He takes the standpoint that he is the best in the field and that the actual clients should be listening to him.  I know he tended to fill the homes he made with his own art, sometimes making more money off of his art then his buildings.  He writes “very few of the houses were anything but painful for me after the clients brought in their belongings.”  Its just interesting to think about the clientele and the reputation this man has, being the “greatest American architect to live”.

Further, it was interesting to read how he thought about windows more as screens.  Screens to “bring the outside world into the house and the inside of the house” outside.  There was a performative aspect to his houses much in the same way he was a performative and famous type of character.  I often wonder with architects that get this big, how much of their own attitudes get wrapped into their lofty ideas or if they are truly, in Wright’s case, building “organic” architecture.  All in all I think he extends a bit of own views on a home onto the client, so that they have no way of forming the house to themselves but have to conform to the ideals of the architect.  I’m not sure if I have a great problem with a lot of his ideas, such as his hatred of box like rooms and idea of screening rooms instead of trapping people in.  But still, he talks so much about physical placidity and is so protective of his ideals.

Amos Rapoport

I enjoyed this reading a lot.  Its interesting to take such a step backwards when thinking about cultural architecture and begin to define this vernacular field of thought.   I remember reading a book by Rem Koolhaas called “mutations” and the book begins by describing how to build a city.  All these different building types are mentioned to place along your city grid—churches, governmental buildings, etc—but it makes no mention of the common house.  I kept thinking of alternatives to the vernacular houses as well, or in-between structures.  Like would the empty height rises on the Williamsburg waterfront be considered vernacular?  I suppose so, even though they are ready to be inhabited and have no residence, even though they were built purely out of speculation, I guess that is sort of a vernacular of New York City, or rather, Manhattan housing.

I thought also about public housing that was built by designers or more famous architects such as Habitat 67, in Montreal.  This was a large housing complex built for the 1967 Worlds Fair and was meant to envision the future of cities and city housing, each having a small private home with its own garden.  It was meant to be affordable housing as well, but because of its popularity and demand became much more expensive then originally planned.

Then, I guess this is often the case with desirable public housing such as the coops in the Lower East Side, the market can take them over.   I do remember a story a friends father told me, who was a engineer in Sweden.  He tells this elaborate story about how him and a group of engineers went to create the perfect housing units, measuring the heights of people and giving each room the appropriate space, and making it mathematically perfect.  And he always says, it was perfect, it was perfect.  But how it eventually got pretty depressing in these units and crime ridden, and people couldn’t tell their buildings apart because of the grid-like layout and such.  And how, from that, he realizes that design is important, and even that architects are important.

But this seems to take a back seat to the overriding amount of houses that are built by normal people or tradesmen.  Its an interesting concept to grapple with, this idea of vernacular and who gets the final word on its definition.  I also can’t help but think about third world countries and the explosive development taking place there, including both skyscrapers and economic development as well as informal housing and slums.  I wonder what vernacular takes form there and how it could change or enhance the definition.  Peaking of symbols too, at the end of the article, if you can differentiate between different housing types or vernaculars, I wonder what symbols exist in the new third world development of formal and informal housing.

Playtime, Jaques Tati

I have been thinking a lot about Jaques Tati’s movie “Playtime” during the last few weeks discussions.  Especially when thinking about the Frankfurt kitchen, the commodification of home, the justification of home as workplace, and residential spaces too in a lot of ways.  If you haven’t seen this movie, its well worth a watch.  Be patient, Tati is sort of into the silent film thing even though this film was made in the 60′s.  He directs and stars as the bumbling character who is walking around modern Paris trying to set up a meeting.  I could talk on and on about this movie, but its a great and humorous critique of modernization and the way it effects the work place, the home, and daily life.  He is particularly interested in the ways in which it estranges us from one another, what kinds of social norms form around the modern, and what it takes to break through these boundaries.

This part of the movie is the one that came to mind last week during class, I could only find these picture of it.  Its filmed as an onlooker, from te view of the street and you see the main character being brought into a modern home of an old friend of his.  Its interesting to see the relationship between the husband and wife, parents and child, visitor and hosts, and technology and relationships.

The movie is full of metaphors.  Here is clip from one of his earlier movies, “Mon Oncle”, showing a kitchen.

I keep thinking of the sociologist Goffman as well, and his study of front and back spaces.  Where front spaces are places where you are acting as someone else, such as at work, and back spaces are where you can be yourself such as at the home.  He says the interplay between the two, when they are transferring, or the lines are blurred, is an interesting point to observe someones behavior.  Its interesting to think about this in a traditional sense and also after todays presentation with many of the residents working from their homes.  Goffman is also from Frankfurt, Germany.  If you watch the movie, do some reading up on it and it will really help interpret things.  It did for me anyways.

Rich and Poor, some thoughts

Interesting point when related to some other readings and our field trip is when Plunz starts to compare 18^th century New York housing to that of the French.  He says on page 62 that Americans love everything French, save their flats.  Fears associated with the more communal French flats “involved extremes, including adultery and the destruction of family life”.

Likewise, in last weeks readings Elizabeth Collins Cromley describes the residents (all who like the Merchant House had Irish slaves) of the “Bella Flats” , a French style flat building built in the 1870’s on 26^th and fourth Ave, and the problems they may encounter when living together in such proximity.  She wrote in Alone Together,

“Confronting unknown neighbors was only one of the several novelties that tenants encountered when they chose to try apartment life”

I feel this still has great resonance in today’s society, where the ideals of self-preservation and protection, especially on the nuclear level, are valued so much and represented in our culture everywhere, especially in the places we live.  It continued to take place through the white flight and suburbanization, and even now in the gentrification of previously low-income neighborhoods in Brooklyn and across NYC.  This idea of “Confronting unknown neighbors” still has so much weight today in urban dwelling.

I can’t help but wonder about the more recent trend in loft living which started in Soho and has spread throughout post-industrial Brooklyn and all of greater New York City.  These types of dwelling, while each one varies, tend to be much more communal in nature, form, and function.  I wonder, if NYC is a trend setter in housing, this is something that will become more popular across the country.  I also can’t help but wonder if the current economic state of our country will force more people to live in closer proximity to one another, much more like the French Flats.  I wonder if a change in the American economic culture will change the physical make-up of our living places.

And just one more thing, I loved the part where Plunz quotes Sarah Gilman Young saying,

“To Americans it is a question of rank.  Anything that resembles what we term a tenement house is tabooed.  There being no fixed caste in America…e have established a certain style of living and expenditure, as a distinctive mark of social position…Especially do we seek an exterior of respectability and wealth in our homes”.

It kept reminding me of exteriors and how important they are in our culture.  The brown stone, the glass wall of 90 stories, the old (looking) brick loft.  How important it is in New York City still, and especially to the upper class, to have an exterior that represents ones social status.

Anyways, sorry to jump around, but if anyone is interested in this chapter in Richard Plunz, I am (slowly) reading a book by LA School urbanist Mike Davis called “Planet of Slums”, and this chapter reminded me a lot of this book.  Its all about slum dwelling, cleareing, living, land policies, etc, in third world countries where cities are experiencing such booms.  So, it is pretty similar and similarly written, except its Lagos from the 1970’s-present, and such.

Thoughts on Saegert reading

I liked this reading for the most part, although I feel it was full of subtleties in the text some of which I wanted to be able to read into further.  This is probably just my desire for a more politically motivated text, and not one so academic and fair handed.  But I did wish she dove into more controversial topics such as demographics or spatial/segregation sort of stuff, and those relations to perhaps mobility or how “anchored” one is in their home.

I got especially excited when on 298 she mentioned “most of the research on housing choice selects populations that have the resources to move, are not radically discriminated against in the process, and are in a stage of household formation that makes size of dwelling unit and long-term financial investments salient”.  I was hoping she would go further into to detail on this, but instead it seems that she sort of reinforced the biased population selection conducted in other housing research with her own research.

Either way, I felt like the turning point of the essay was also on page 298 in the first few sentences where she makes a huge list of demographics that “significantly affect the housing needs of a household as well as its likelihood of achieving and being satisfied by culturally valued housing forms”.  I liked this part, probably, just because my imagination could run through the different demographics and think of all the different ways these demographics effect the use and value of the house, and of course home.

Perhaps that is my largest problem with the reading, simply the way she wrote was quite safe and non-imaginative.  I appreciated her even handedness, and the way she pointed out specific places in housing that have been under studied, and her suggestions for further studying housing in the future.  But I feel as if it remained so open ended that, for me, it failed to move me.

I do love thinking of poverty in the visual.  I think it is a large barrier in solving some of the social injustice in America has to do with aesthetics.  On page 304, where it describes housing depravations as part cause and part consequence of poverty itself.  I think thats interesting because the visual aspect of poverty is so powerful and has such a grip, and also has so many actors on it making it what it is.  For instance, neighborhoods, local governments, non-profits, local churches, policies, and things such as suburban opinion all shape the aesthetic of the urban.  I also like on 290 her descriptions of ghettos, that while sort of stale, is interesting because it talks about restricting some movements and allowing others, allowing those who live in it not so free movement into the outside world, but free movement within their own cultural circle.

I wonder about this system of almost oppression and control in the physical/social.  What things are released from ghettos into the mass media, and what stays locked inside physical embodiments of memory.  What is marketable about urban poor neighborhoods, and what is reality.  How does architecture and the house help or inhibit ones chance in the world.