WPA Video: Local Code / Real Estates

I managed to butcher the announcement of the WPA 2.0 finalists a few weeks back... (which should be up to date now)... and was made aware of it thanks to Ben Golder, one of the team members from the Local Code team. He recently sent me this link to a video of their project. I will post some more when they are available, but for now enjoy this one.

WPA2 : Local Code / Real Estates from Nicholas de Monchaux on Vimeo.

WPA 2.0 Student Finalists

As a follow-up to the previous post, the student award finalists were announced as well, including a few of the notables images from some of the entries.

“R_Ignite” was designed by four graduate students of the Manchester School of Architecture – Peter Millar, Jamie Potter, Andy Wilde and Stuart Wheeler. This proposal revitalizes port cities and greens the shipwrecking industry through the addition of recycling and social activities."


:: image via Bustler

“Aquaculture Canal_New Orleans,” by Fadi Masoud, a Landscape Architecture student at the University of Toronto, envisions the New Orleans’ Industrial Canal as productive infrastructure for flood control and aquaculture. The jury noted that the winning submissions were ideal as a pair, representing the range of innovative ideas relevant to WPA 2.0."


:: image via Bustler

Additional finalists included:

St Viaduct: Polytechnic HighSchool & Transportation Center; Studio Three - Douglas Segulja - Parsons School of Constructed Environments

Fluctuating Freeway Ecologies; The Crop - Gary Garcia . Marc Yeber . Iris Tsai . Xiaoye Zhang - USC School of Architecture

urban ConAgraculture; Dale Luebbert - University of Nebraska

Cash for Clunkers = Bike Sharing for Chicago; M-Squared - Matt Moore IIT

Topographic Infrastructure: Hollywood Freeway Central Park; YMeng; Meng Yang; USC School of Architecture

Just the names themselves sound intriguing, and there will undoubtedly be some additional images of the rest of the student winners down the line a bit, so stay tuned. Amazing work and great to see the interdisciplinary nature of infrastructure realized with a mix of architecture and landscape architecture student's getting honored. I hope to follow up with some thoughts (beyond this simple rehashing on the words and images) in due time.

WPA 2.0 Winners

[post corrected on 12.13.09]

I have been remiss in posting about the WPA 2.0 competition beyond this initial post way back when... it's been exciting to see both the professional and student awards coming together into a fabulous compilation on information on the reinvention of public infrastructure. So alas, it was time to capture at least a portion of the great ideas that came from the submittals.



Carbon T.A.P // Tunnel Algae Park
The grand prize winner of the competition was: "... the brainchild of PORT architects Andrew Moddrell and Christopher Marcinkoski of Chicago and New York. The proposal uses algae pontoons to capture mobile-source carbon-dioxide emissions along New York City’s transportation arteries and employ them in bio-fuel production, creating an urban park with structured wetlands, aquatic and avian habitat, recreation amenities, as well as high speed bike lanes and public promenades. The jury... was unanimous in its decision, citing two primary qualities: The floating, carbon-capturing bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan would be a visible marker for the tunnel hidden below, and the periodic rotation of the parkway across the river had the power to reshape the image of the city."




:: images via Bustler

There is also a video of the winner here:



The remainder of the finalists are captured on the WPA site (provided by competition sponsor cityLAB), from this post on Bustler. The other five finalist entries are found below:

HYDRO-GENIC CITY, 2020
"Through the development of integrated, ecologically sensitive, and aesthetically compelling architecture, this proposal seeks to turn the often mechanistic infrastructural system of LA - in this case, the waterworks - into an interactive and sensory series of public nodes. As mist platforms/light rail stations, urban beaches, energy producing water treatment plants, solar-panel encased water towers, pools, and aquatic parking lots, these water-based landscapes become organizational moments for community building."




:: images via Bustler

Local Code / Real Estates
"Tapping into the Department of Public Works catalogue of San Francisco's "unaccepted streets" (those no longer maintained by the city and hence neglected and often impassable), this proposal utilizes various computer models and statistical data to determine and propose new public, park-based uses for these interstitial spaces. Over 1600 of these sites are available, a selection of which are analyzed for the proposal in terms of elevation and topography, microclimate, soil type, hydrology, population density and demographics, economics, crime, and existing networks to determine the most parametrically appropriate transformation of use."




:: images via Bustler

Coupling Infrastructures: Water Economies/Ecologies
"This proposal focuses on America’s impending water crisis, particularly in cities in the southwest where growth is high and water availability is limited, by rethinking water use, distribution, and storage. Using the Salton Sea as a model site, the proposal envisions “converting the Sea back to its recreational use while allowing multiple economic opportunities for the production of water, salt, and more efficient greenhouses.” Here “infrastructure [becomes] an extension of nature.” Island pods provide for salt harvesting, recreation, and new animal habitats."




:: images via Bustler

Border Wall as Infrastructure
“[T]here exists far more potential in a construction project that is estimated to cost up to $1,325.75 per linear foot.” Recognizing the high cost, limited effectiveness and unintended natural consequences of the new, multi-layered US/Mexico border wall (disruption of animal habitats, diversion of water runoff that has caused new flooding in nearby towns), this proposal names 30 alternatives (covering nearly the whole of the Mexican alphabet, literally from Aqueduct wall to Zen wall) that might better combat the energy crisis, risk of death from dehydration, disruption of animal habitat, loss of vegetation, negative labor relations, missing creative vision and lack of cross-cultural appreciation likely in the government sponsored version."




:: images via Bustler

1,000,000,000 Global Water Refugees
"Combining the rust belts’ loss of population with its abundance of fresh water, this proposal outlines a strategy for redensification of under-utilized post-industrial landscapes (parts of Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland) by relocating populations threatened by water scarcity."




:: images via Bustler

Portland Grid, revisited

The question of the efficacy of the grid system is continually interesting, and there have been some interesting conversations about this with a range of folks locally. Another resource to throw some information into this discussion is the recently released background documents in support of the Portland Plan. One worth checking out for any Portland-phile is the segment on Urban Form (it's a large file, so this is a link to all of the background reports).

Scrolling through it, I found this interesting two page study on block typologies, which mentions the ubiquitous 200' square blocks:


:: image via Portland Plan

From page 37-38 of the Urban Form document: "A city’s structure of streets and blocks serves as its urban DNA, shaping its development long into the future. While Downtown Portland’s system of compact 200' by 200' blocks is sometimes seen as Portland’s fundamental pattern, it covers only a small part of the city. As will be summarized in this chapter, Portland includes a diverse and varied range of urban patterns. These examples highlight the wide range of block structures found in Portland (they are not intended to represent what is typical or most common)."

This couple of pages continues to outline a range of variations, also giving an average size and location that they commonly appear within the city. The grid obviously starts to stretch in some areas, turning into a rectangular grid with one elongated side and the inclusion of alleys in some areas. These are bisected by some of the anomalous items like diagonal streets. There is also a larger retangular block size as growth sprawls out into Northeast and East Portland.








:: image via Portland Plan

The square and rectangular blocks degrade in a number of ways, including some neighborhoods that have a more diagonal grid that creates triangular blocks and open spaces. Subsequent iterations include more curvilinear blocks are rectangular grid but with undulating curves, and some more organic layouts that may or may not have been influenced by topography.








:: image via Portland Plan

As you can see, there is definitely an evolution away from the small grid, which is mostly located in the City Center and inner eastside. It's also interesting to see the changes and experimentation that happened as the city moves outward from the center. But wait, there's more... another set of typologies to augment these patterns that offers some more typologies, including the very archetypal Ladd's Addition, an beautiful oddity for sure, as well as plain ol' curvy sprawl. It's a fascinating study.


:: click to enlarge - via Portland Plan

These patterns aren't necessarily the all-encompassing group, but it does outline a vocabulary of almost 20 varieties that range from the prototypical 200x200 block. I spent a couple of days in San Francisco this past week, working on a project, and it was interesting to contrast a small grid with a comparably large one, particularly at a pedestrian scale. It was a block-by-block decision whether this made one or the other more successful - but it wasn't a particular winner either way. Along that line, check out my colleague Brett Milligan and a couple of posts on his Free Association Design blog about the grid and a case study of vertical subterranean structure from Guanajuato.

More to come on the comparisons, for sure and definitely more on the Portland Plan and associated documentation. For those interested, check out the latest community involvement dates to see where the Plan is going...

Size Does Matter, or Not

An interesting article in Planetizen called "Beloved and Abandoned: A Platting Named Portland" investigates one of the unique, frustrating and beloved quirks of Portland. This is, our slicework of 200 foot square blocks... making for a lot of roads, and development of tiny blocks. It's our burden to bear. The article is a fascinating ride - so check it out.


:: all images via Planetizen

The authors discuss the 'Hippodamian' grid, which is an interesting way of saying square, and relate it to current urban design theory and practice. "Current planning literature brims with references to "the grid" in juxtaposition with curvilinear and dendrite conventional suburban layouts. The "grid" as a network concept has been widely accepted and is now regarded as a superior geometry for laying out greenfield and infill sites."



There is also the reference to the success of Portland directly related to these small blocks, which I'd disagree with (as the authors soon do). I'd say Portland succeeds in spite of this phenomenon, and the issues pervade - as is shown with a reference to successful urban grids, mostly those of the non-square ilk. "Urbanists and romanticists have expressed equally strong sentiments about Paris, London, Barcelona, Curitiba, Amsterdam and Venice. Of the six, only Barcelona adopted the Hippodamian grid in 1859 for its vast expansion, and Venice, without a classic grid, is the preeminent pedestrian haven, yet neither city matches the urbanist’s praise for Portland. Whatever the mix of reasons, Portland dominates the American planners' imagination feelings and talk. Disentangling this intangible realm can be an elusive goal; grounds and figures on the other hand may produce tangible results."

A grid alone is not the recipe for success, and in practice there are few pure iterations of the grid, with zigs, zags, curvy spots, the axial geometry of Ladds addition, and many other quirks. As a fan of the grid for wayfinding and layout, there's something to be said for the rigorous adherance to the formality, which much theory has been laid out in curvy, suburban blah. Some support of the grid: "The degree of connectivity of the street network could count as another practical reason. 'Network', by definition, is a set of linked components, whether a spider-net, a fishnet, or the Internet - all networks connect. What distinguishes them is the manner, geometry and frequency of connection: leaf, tree, blood vessels, telephone and web networks are dendrite, hierarchical (fractal) but fishnets are not. Portland’s is a dense fishnet with nodes at every 200 feet, which produce 360 intersections per square mile -- the highest ratio in America, and 3 to 5 times higher than current developments. For example, older and newer areas in Toronto, typical of most cities, range from 72 to 119 intersections per square mile in suburbs and 163 to 190 in older areas with a grid. As connectivity rose in importance as a planning principle, Portland’s grid emerges as a supreme example.

Coupled with connectivity, its rectilinear geometry is indisputably more advantageous for navigation on foot, car or bike than any alternatives. Visitors often feel lost and disoriented in medieval towns and in contemporary suburbs and this feeling leads to anxiety and even fear and a sense that all is not well."

The grid is rightly stated as derived by speculators for maximum corner lots - not in the grand plan of some more model communities. The fact is, again, that the grid can improve or degrade the urban environment, as the authors mention, but success is not inherently depending on that as the only criteria. "Evidently, Portland’s founders either understood little about infrastructure costs or judged them irrelevant; a judgment that no planner, developer or municipality today would take at face value. When economic efficiency matters, Portland’s grid fails the grade."

In a theoretical sense only. There's comments from Sitte and Duany on the lack of art in the grid... but really is urban planning about art? Is curvy and artistic more successful in an urban context? I doubt it. Anyway, the fact that our grid, much like the national grid system, is overlaid on a extant topography in somewhat irresponsible ways have led to issues with erasure and negative impact on natural hydrologic patterns, which only bend when topography and streams are too steep or significant to pipe, grade, and cover over. Also, the sheer amount of street paving is significant, as our small blocks lead to significantly more stormwater impacts. This however, has been the genesis for innovative strategies such as green streets to combat this - sort of making a silk purse out of a bad grid.



While it may be easy to ignore progress in combating our bad grid, it's again a pointless thought exercise (these adaptions in the following paragraph are the lifeblood of modern urbanism, as we can't recreate what has already been created). Thus, it's interesting to think of ways of refuting the present by showing how the past is flawed: "The ordinary impression on the ground that the Portland grid 'works' in contemporary traffic conditions is casually taken as a sign of suitability. This view obscures an entire century of engineered physical, mechanical and management adaptations which are overlaid on the 1866 platting. Remove these (in a thought experiment) and imagine the outcome. Clearly, an ill-suited geometry is made to work with interventions such as dividing lines, medians, traffic signs, traffic lights, directional signs, bollards, street widening, one-ways, traffic circles or roundabouts and many others."

I think that's called adapting to change, but then again, it's a thought experiment, so fun nonetheless. As the authors conclude: "For reasons of land efficiency, infrastructure cost, municipal expenses, rainwater management, traffic safety and flow, and the demand for increased pedestrian share of public space, the praised, pure Portland platting will likely not find new followers. Portland will remain a adored and beloved by urbanists, but her Hippodamian grid layout seems destined for the archives, abandoned as a good idea of a byegone era. This transcendence leaves urbanists, who seek to regenerate a contemporary urban pattern that is as pure, complete and systematic, looking for alternatives: ones which excite the same first blush of adoration and delight and lead to a deep abiding love, but also hold up to intense scrutiny of their economic, social and environmental performance."

I agree with the main tenets of their thesis (and it's a great notion and read) and frankly think the grid is a pain in the ass, but it's one of those theoretical arguments that really doesn't mean much in terms of modern urbanism, particularly in a city that plans things to death and beyond. Few if any new cities are built from scratch with no existing contextual framework - so maybe in the few new communities, a particular utopian grid system can be applied - probably modeled after the latest New Urbanist theory. It'd be interesting to imagine a re-thinking of the 'Hippodamian' grid being retrofit, as is, into something else in Portland - elongated, filled in, abstracted into a more pure and reasonable pattern, with streets removed to be open spaces, bikeways, and other green infrastructural systems. But the question is moot, a thought experiment if you will, and like it or not we are stuck with our pattern.

We deal with it, we plan around it. We love its street/building staccato chatter back and forth, with our 360 intersections per square mile, and we curse the stop sign hovering on your bike every 200 feet, waiting for that car to come zipping by take you out. It makes life exciting. But, in general it doesn't mean much, and isn't as derogatory to a high quality public realm as implied. Portland isn't to be copied for urban form, and really shouldn't be degraded for a grid system that was done without regard. We're known for for innovation and foresight in policy, transportation, stormwater management, and other factors. Many of these come from the very problems that arise from our back-assward small grids. But it works, because sometimes a grid is just a grid.

Big Box Surplus Space

One of the major 'big ideas' of our Integrating Habitats competition, or the idea of reinventing suburbia in general, is the reduced parking need over time - and what to do with the leftover paved areas. An article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows this idea isn't merely peak oil induced futurism, but a more current reality. From the article: "Ever think a Home Depot parking lot is too sprawling and vacant? Home Depot does, too. 'A number of stores have barren asphalt, and it’s not in anyone’s best interest to leave it sitting there,' said Mike LaFerle, Home Depot’s vice president of real estate."


:: image via ajc

It's not a surprise, when at least 1/3 of all the properties for big box stores are for parking and many stores downsizing or at least getting much less traffic, that valuable land starts looking desirable. Continuing: "But Home Depot has land, and lots of it. In its most recent annual report, the company said it owns 89 percent of its 2,274 stores chainwide (including stores in Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico). That’s 212 million square feet of real estate — not including parking lots and garden sales areas. The value of Home Depot’s land assets totaled $8.3 billion, the report said, and building assets are $17 billion."

What might this mean in terms of area? "Few big box stores have as much parking as a Home Depot, he noted. Home Depot typically buys about 12 to 15 acres per store, he said, at an average cost of $500,000 per acre. He estimated Home Depot could sell the acreage for about that much, and raise tens of millions of dollars with the asset sales."

At 2000 stores, that's between up to 30,000 square feet of pavement ready for repurposing in full or in part.
Oddly enough (or perhaps not surprising) the ideas of how to reuse these spaces, mostly with more of the same (in a smaller variety): "Despite the general retail slowdown, chains that are still expanding — such as Chick-fil-A, Arby’s and El Pollo Loco — may jump at the chance to be near a Home Depot store, he said. “It’s a good strategy,” he said. “It’s no different from a power center anchored by a Target or Kohl’s, with small tenants like Sally Beauty Supply as a co-tenant.”


:: the cat box? - image via lowering the bar

Or as I mentioned in an email recently. That's like cleaning all the dogshit out of the backyard, then dumping the catbox in a pile in the front yard... or something like that :)

Sustainable Sites - Update

From some sneak peeks of the latest update to the Sustainable Sites Initiative (more from L+U here), I was both excited about the next iteration and establishment of more rigorous set of criteria, and a bit curious how it was going to maintain some of the necessary distance, inclusivity and poetry that is lacking in many other site rating systems. I'm not sure how I feel about the new split between the guidelines and the 'case' for sustainable sites



The full text from the Sustainable Sites website:

"The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009 is the product of more than four years of work by a diverse group of experts in soils, hydrology, vegetation, materials and human health and well-being. It is expanded and updated from the Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks –Draft 2008, which was released in November 2008. The Initiative developed criteria for sustainable land practices that will enable built landscapes to support natural ecological functions by protecting existing ecosystems and regenerating ecological capacity where it has been lost. This report focuses on measuring and rewarding a project that protects, restores and regenerates ecosystem services – benefits provided by natural ecosystems such as cleaning air and water, climate regulation and human health benefits.

The Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009 includes a rating system for the credits which the pilot process will test for refinement before a formal release to the market place. The Rating System contains 15 prerequisites and 51 credits that cover all stages of the site development process from site selection to landscape maintenance. If you are interested in becoming a pilot project to test this Rating System, please apply here. Feedback from the pilot projects will be used to create a reference guide which will provide suggestions on how projects achieved the sustainability goals of specific credits.

The companion document titled The Case for Sustainable Landscapes provides a set of arguments—economic, environmental, and social—for the adoption of sustainable land practices, additional background on the science behind the performance criteria in the guidelines and performance benchmarks, the purpose and principles of the Sustainable Sites Initiative, and a sampling of some of the case studies the Initiative has followed."

It's great to see a site-specific system taking shape, and can't wait to see it begin to permeate the discussion of true sustainability and green building - and addition long-lacking in the current dialogue. For a bit of additional info, check out this short presentation 'Landscapes Give Back' which makes a case for the role of landscape in this discussion. More to come.

More to come after I have a chance to take a look at the updated documents. Additionally, the concept of What is a Sustainable Site will be a common theme in the next year, as the Oregon ASLA embarks on a number of events, discussions, workshops, and symposia around this idea.

Large Parks

In the spirit of one of the finest collections of writing on parks (and landscape urbanism) 'Large Parks' (edited by Czerniak & Hargreaves) a recent post on The Infrastructurist catalogs 10 of the world's greatest large parks. "We thought it would be fun to take ten of the world’s largest, most famous, and most beautiful city parks–some combination of those virtues, anyway–and view them from above, all at the same scale, to get a sense of how they’re situated in the fabric of their respective cities and how they work as a whole." Not sure what the reference of what makes them 'great', not it's completeness - and they admittedly have a Western influence but the idea of parks that are reconciled to a similar scale is pretty cool. Very similar to the graphic in the Large Parks book comparing them in B/W figure ground.

A few of the examples:


:: Central Park (NYC) - image via The Infrastructurist


:: The Tiergarten (Berlin) - image via The Infrastructurist


:: Hyde Park (London) - image via The Infrastructurist

Urban Urinals

Well in defense of the scatological, peeing in urban areas (or other specific displays of a variety of bodily functions) is something of a way of life (often in the doorway of our downtown office). Portland has become another in a line of cities experimenting with public toilets in the inner city for use by tourists, downtown denizens, and the large number of seasonal homeless.


:: image via Trend Updates

From Trend Updates: "A archetype of the toilet estimated to cost from (US) $140,000 — (US) $360,000 has been built under the (US) $500,000 development program budget, but [Commissioner Randy] Leonard feels hat the planned mass production model would cut down the cost to a mere (US) $25,000, that is in case he lures the other cities into getting them."


:: image via Trend Updates

"The stainless steel solar loo would prove economical on maintenance and is functional in all climate with solar powered lighting, heaters and ventilation. In my opinion, the other cities should try the product as it is eco-friendly and would save a lot of money both in the production and usage departments."

While full scale toilets are an option, these often lead to potential crime issues (or opportunities for policing) and in the case of Seattle, a total and expensive removal after a rash of issues. Perhaps a more simple and decentralized type of facility is necessary.

A couple of examples. The first, via Treehugger, offers a sculptural option of the 'Pee Tree' by Joa Herrenknecht, which: "...has the abstracted form and the dimensions of a tree. It's bright ceramic white is a strong signal and is to be seen from far - making it accessible when in urgent need. The trunk offers a perfect place for messaging, e.g. the common "I was here" or "done that" statements, which we all know from Club-toilets."

:: image via Treehugger

A more small-scale example (via the Design Blog) is the Axixa by Mexican designer Miguel Melgarejo, who: "...has come up with a public urinal concept... that will help in maintaining the cleanliness in the streets. Featuring the shape that a leak leaves on a wall, the public ceramic urinal generates a permanent mark in public streets or places where people can urinate and participate in a manifestation in which the disposal itself becomes part of the public life."




:: images via The Design Blog

Sometimes, when you gotta go, you gotta go. It's good to have options.

Urban Ag-gregations

Nothing is more hot this year than the idea of urban agriculture in it's many forms. Perhaps due to the economic downturn or maybe just a natural extension of our new found urban ecologic sensibility that includes urban agriculture at the highest levels - there is not shortage of the wonderful and the questionable in the realm of city-based food production.


:: image via The Infrastructurist

The interesting and inevitable direction of any trend is the spawning of products to aid in the adoption of gardening. Some notable ones include the idea of services - such as Seed to Plate (below), or the plethora of land sharing or backyard farming options.


:: image via Treehugger

There are also some tools for simple gardening that made me chuckle, such as the Roll out Vegetable Patch which is a "... corrugated cardboard mat ... sowed with four types of vegetable seeds and organic fertilizer all ready to be rolled out - all you need to do is add water and soil."


:: image via Inhabitat

And for the uber-lazy or totally clueless, why not just get a garden in a box sent via post from Rocket Gardens. Perhaps going to the store and picking up some seed packets is just too difficult for some. I jest (somewhat) - because any method of getting people to garden more - particularly kids, is a good thing. But how about teaching them about it in reality - not just reinforcing commodization of our food items by having them show up in a box.


:: image via Treehugger

This education and adoption leads to such interventions as window boxes which continue gaining ground in dense areas, a number of more refined (but somewhat elegantly simple) solutions pop up as well, such as Earth Boxes. (more here)


:: image via Inside Urban Green

Urban gleaning isn't a new idea, but seems to have re-emerged as a viable pursuit. As GOOD magazine puts it - food grows on trees, so we may want to take advantage of what's there in a more formal way. And in a new twist the idea of tapping urban trees for maple syrup - one I haven't seen before.


:: image via cbcnews

Finally, the idea of seed bombing is both subversive and getting more commercialized - and has also created a number of iterations - such as this great post on 'Johnny Apple Sandal' via BLDGBLOG. Also, check out the video by Guerilla Gardening guru Richard Reynolds for mixing up your own verdant morsels via the Guardian.


:: image via ecolocalizer

Reading List: Learning from Las Vegas

:: Logorama by H5 - image via Designboom


:: (color plate from the book)

It is one of those books that everyone should read at some point, so I finally got around to sitting down and busting through the entirety of my copy of Learning from Las Vegas by Venturi, Scott-Brown and Izenour. Strangely enough, it was a disparate context in which this reading occurred, sitting in the backyard of my relatively pastoral house in Portland, drinking cold Miller High Life in a bottle, smoking cigarettes, and watching chickens run between by legs picking at the detritus on the ground around me. Pretty far from the bright lights of the Vegas strip - particularly the version of it that existing in the late sixties when the famous studio regarding to 'The Great Proletarian Cultural Locomotive."

(all images from the book)



I don't aim to summarize the book here as much as to reflect on the relevance of the text to our time. The opening essay 'A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas' is what I consider the best part of the book - and should be widely read. A version of JB Jackson's modern anthropology through the lens of ego-driven architects, it's some hyperbolic prose that is worthy of the city in which it is directed.



What it does do is incent the architect or planner to look at the context and consider it in design, which was mostly a reaction to the predominant modern tendency of the time, that of the Modernism. As stated in the opening page: "Modern architects work through analogy, symbol, and image - although they have gone to lengths to disclaim almost all determinants of their forms except structural necessity and the program - and they derive insights, analogies, and stimulation from unexpected images." (p.3)

While this way of looking acknowledges this historicism and allows some guidance to interpreting the present. In the case of a reference to Nolli maps and the idea of using a graded figure ground to provide more detailed information about the sites nuances - for instance the powerful imagery of the Roman piazza and the more subtle blending of interior (private) and semi-exterior spaces (quasi-public). A modern take on this realizes the idea of the piazza as the open expanses of parking lot, and the casinos as quasi-public space that spills out and engages the street.



One aspect of the book that is fascinating is the interesting graphic representations that are both of a particular time - but somewhat timeless in their simple composition of ideas and context. It seems like there are a number of re-interpretations of this style and I think it's a pretty good reference point. This is particularly relevant to landscape architecture which (albeit often for good reasons) often uses color as a crutch, and seems stuck in a graphic vocabulary that hasn't changed much in twenty years - particularly in relation to site analysis.





One of these powerful images is the analysis of the strip in terms of the words that one sees when moving through the corridor... done old school - but something that could be rendered using new media methods such as flash animation to provide simple yet effective tools - maybe allowing a user to move along the roadway and showing the relative visual power of the various icons based on location and distance.



The books strength is its look at the cultural aspects of the city as generators of form and the context driven approach, and seems to wander in the final portions to include too much editorializing and WAY too much use of the work of Venturi to illustrate points. (Sorry fans of Venturi, but most of that work isn't merely ugly and ordinary in a poetic sense, but just plain bad). That's not to say they aren't a good counterpoint to the modern brutalism that it is juxtaposed against, but there could be some better work to use rather than the Guild House and the Columbus, Indiana Fire House No. 4.

The polarizing rhetoric of 'yes' vs. 'no' actually works well in Las Vegas, where the context and use is so out of whack with reality that what seems real is actually wrong and what seems overly wrought is actually perfect. The lexicon of ducks and decorated sheds have persisted and should be studies for reuse in our mindless strip development - because it at least offers some authenticity that is sorely lacking in the suburban strip development that many people exist throughout.



Additionally, on representation, the idea of a strong visual is often metered with a number of comparative lists (for instance the image below analyzing urban sprawl vs. megastructures and finding both lacking somewhat). These are really interesting studies - and would actually be a great tool for theory to provide a quick brainstorming that gives some interesting point/counter-points... each of which could be explored in detail (click on the image below to see it larger).



While the lists are dense with information, it's often the visuals that show these dichotomous relationships within Las Vegas the most - as in the mixing of derivative classicism with modern motile necessity.



While it was definitely worth a read (especially amidst the contextual opposite of the backyard farm) the first half of the book is much more worthwhile than the second - particularly when read today. The ideas of looking and learning from something that is more often than not dismissed as non-architecture or anti-urban is a necessity for anyone working in these fields. More urban than landscape (at least in a literal sense) the idea of signs, symbols, and communication within our urban realm makes for a lesson that this book still seems valid - and worth taking a look.