S K Y L I N E | 39 |A Monumental Investigation, Investigating Decentralized Futures, The Future of Architecture Under Capitalism
and more! The Week Ahead of October 1.
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Good Morning! Happy Friday! Nicholas Raap here, serving you the latest and greatest of news and events for the week gone by and the week to come.
Discourse, to some extent, occurs in cycles. While not a closed loop, certain topics and ideas seem to bubble up year after year, month after month, ebbing and flowing in and out of a quasi/pseudo-collective consciousness. Each of the three dispatches this week report back on topics of longstanding discussion within the discourse of architecture, each highlighting a particularly prominent—and occasionally divisive—conversation that has occurred both within the discipline and society at large. This particularly applies to ANTONIO PACHECO’s write-up of the launch of the National Monument Audit, investigating a topic that has received much mainstream attention as of late. KEVIN RITTER reports on ‘smart cities’ from a conference on technology and decentralization held at the ur-smart city itself, Hudson Yards, and I present a new Five Points of architecture under late capitalism developed by MATTHEW SOULES.
Speaking of cycles, looking at the upcoming events this week brings up many memories, some recent, some from that distant, foggy, time-before-Covid. Of the recent variety, the smart city returns when Shannon Mattern discusses her new book A City is Not a Computer, a book which grew from essays in her column on Places Journal. Another returning presence is Álvaro Siza Vieira, who speaks at GSAPP for the debut of the English translation of his 1998 Immaginare l’Evidenza (Imagine the Evident). From ‘the before times’, Archtober (of which NYRA is a media partner!) has returned to in person building tours and events. Of note are two quasi-kick-off parties. First, the Center for Architecture reopens its doors with two exhibitions and a slew of events tonight (4-8pm). Second, the Van Alen is throwing a block party at their new Gowanus home tomorrow. Keep scrolling for more news, events, and maybe even a meme. Cheers.
— Nicholas Raap
DISPATCHES
9/29: Our Country’s Monumental Legacy
In an online talk, MONUMENT LAB’s DR. PAUL FARBER delivered the research findings of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded National Monument Audit, a year-long study focused on uncovering salient trends and categorical affinities within the monumental legacies of the United States. The hour-long event included a Q+A session with the scholar and Mellon Foundation President DR. ELIZABETH ALEXANDER, as well as a lively and interactive chat discussion that took on a life of its own.
For the Audit, Monument Lab’s 30-member team collected information from previous tabulations and a bevy of publicly accessible records to compile over 500,000 data points, figures used to ultimately narrow down the audit to a “study set” of 48,178 individual monumental works. This study set was then interrogated by a team of scholars, teachers, and municipal workers to draw forth lessons on what these monuments say about how the United States venerates its past, who it considers worth venerating, and how these trends speak to “generational” impulses, large and small, national and local. “The Monument landscape is overwhelmingly white and male,” Faber explained, adding that among the “top 50” list of most featured personages, “monuments to historical men grossly outnumber those to historical women,” with half of the most prominent figured having been engaged with the institution of slavery. Within this top 50 list, Joan of Arc, Sacagawea, and Harriet Tubman are the only women to rank highly; the list, according to Faber, includes no Latinx, Asian, or LGBTQ individuals whatsoever. In addition to these trends, Monument Lab found that an overwhelming percentage of the nation’s icons are dedicated to war and colonial conquest, and, more specifically, that few of the monuments dedicated to the Civil War make any mention of the struggle to overthrow slavery. “Toll of war on our country is profound and is told in our monuments,” Faber stated, “[these monuments] also minimize the social and environmental cost of war for veterans and their communities.”
In looking backward with this data-driven approach, Monument Lab’s efforts seek to unsettle what might seem like old history. As the wide ranging efforts to topple, reconsider, and reinterpret a variety of sordid and under-appreciated monumental works occurring over the last few years highlight, the memorial legacy of the United States is one that is, and has always been, deeply in flux. The country’s symbolic and aspirational legacy is one, the audit shows, that moves unevenly, and with significant periods of reconsideration and reconfiguration occurring cyclically throughout the decades as various social groups, intellectual concerns, and public and private initiatives take root, flower, and die-off. It is perhaps fitting then that the audit represents only one part of the Mellon Foundation’s $250 million Monuments Project, and that its findings will likely inspire future reconsiderations and initiatives that will further complicate this legacy.
— Antonio Pacheco
9/24: Get in losers… We’re going to decentralize the future…
Unfinished Live, a conference spread across two days at Hudson Yards’ The Shed, promised to explore a decentralized future with a “stronger democracy” and a “fairer economy,” all enabled by technological developments. Featuring a parade of Big-Names-Thinking-About-Technology, the event sought to propose ways to ameliorate technology’s well-documented harms in the political and social spheres to a hybrid audience both in person and online.
The “Citizen-Led Smart Cities” panel—moderated by NYU prof NEIL KLEIMAN, with “civic impact” expert and Johns Hopkins associate vice provost BETH BLAUER, former NYC Chief Analytics Officer AMEN RA MASHARIKI, and Urban Tech Hub executive director ROBINSON HERNANDEZ—focused on the intersection of the tech industry and city planning. The panelists bristled at the moniker ‘smart city,’ a term which originated in the marketing offices of tech giants with sometimes questionable intentions for the cities they seek to make ‘smart’. As tech companies moved into the “CivTech” sphere, Blauer noted, they have often predatorily extracted funds from city governments: first charging to install data collecting sensors, and then charging again to access the data collected, while not offering solutions to the problems the sensors were installed to illustrate. Blauer called for a solutions-oriented approach that does not focus solely on data collection but has goals of equity in mind.
Speaking to a specific issue, the panelists discussed the difficulties of temperature regulation in NYCHA housing. For a resident to receive maintenance on steam heating systems, they must document the temperature in their apartment over a set time-period to demonstrate the existence of a prolonged problem. As a time consuming process, residents facing compounding challenges of poverty might find it difficult to consistently record and report this information, so planners might look to smart thermometers to proactively register apartment temperatures instead of relying solely on resident feedback. However, no one on the panel observed that planners might instead take residents at their word, that their apartment is too hot or too cold, before even collecting quantitative data.
A panel introducing Unfinished’s art initiative, Unfinished Camp, felt itself unfinished, as a majority of participants in the program were unable to attend because they were celebrating its launch at Art Basel. Artists and curators from The High Line, The Shed, and Serpentine Gallery, spoke about their engagement with decentralization on a sleek, television-ready set, while the audience sat silently in darkness.
The final panel of the day, “Coding Ethics Down the Stack,” saw billionaire real estate mogul and Unfinished founder FRANK MCCOURT, two Stanford professors, and a former high-level Facebook employee discussing their hopes for a decentralized, equitable future tech world. The audience applauded when they agreed with the panelists, but no one asked them what future they imagined.
At the end of the event, the in-person attendees with $100 tickets descended the escalators to unmask and enjoy a cocktail reception. The people watching via the free livestream closed the browser tab and continued on with their day.
— Kevin Ritter
9/23: Icebergs, Zombies, and Ultra Thins! Oh my!
Last Thursday, MATTHEW SOULES joined PEGGY DEAMER and JACK SELF in conversation, moderated by ANNA BOKOV and hosted by the Cooper Union, for the launch of his new book, Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin: Architecture and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. Specifically looking at what Soules’ calls contemporary ‘finance capitalism’, he argued that one of architecture’s fundamental operations today is as a financial asset and instrument. Further, this reality has given rise to distinct architectural forms, each given monikers at once humorous and precise.
After introducing the historical basis and trajectories of financialization, Soules began to lay out five broad characteristics of architecture under finance capitalism, which in the opinion of this author, should well take prominence alongside another famous quintet in architectural history.
It is inherently unstable and creates spaces of crisis.
It increasingly functions as speculative wealth storage.
It is the means of uneven development and heightened inequality.
It has a simultaneous propensity for highly iconic and extremely standardized spaces.
It increases liquidity.
These characteristics have resulted in forms like the “iceberg homes” of London, or the “ultra-thin pencil towers” dotting the Manhattan’s (and soon Brooklyn’s) skyline, or even the “exurban investment mats,” expanses of identical housing coating the peripheries of cities, all of which arise through specific logics which Soules convincingly argues are eminently financial.
In responding to a marketing image common to many of these ‘ultra-thins’—a solitary bathtub in front of a window overlooking the skyline—Deamer said she was “shocked that the promoters or even the architects aren’t embarrassed,” by how these projects cater only to the individual, and the rich individual at that. Whereas historically what shaped the skylines were symbols of institutions—church spires gave way to towering corporate headquarters; both symbols of collaborative endeavors, even if unequal ones—“now what is shaping the skyline is these privates spaces. It’s not even the family, it’s you, in the most private space, in the most private body.”
Deamer also noted the decline in cultural relevance of the architect, something Jack Self described as the “canary in the coal mine [of] becoming overly financialized.” However, Self still saw the position of the architect as “extremely important for the future of capitalism or post-capitalism” as they are one of “a few entities to integrate specialized professions and thinking… I’m always amazed by the scope of knowledge architects have.” However, financial knowledge, as well as knowledge of material supply chains, need to become more common and prevalent in this scope. “You need to know you’re not magically in control of these things.”
— Nicholas Raap
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
NYRA gathered at citygroup Tuesday evening, where we ate dumplings, toasted our subscribers, and folded and mailed out more than 600 copies of Issue #22. We would happily mail one more to you if you decide to support our contributors and subscribe today.
LAST WEEK’S MOST CLICKED LINK
Charles Weak observed “[the Great Plains] have everything we need to do great architecture right here.” Readers concurred, as they were interested to learn more about South Dakota based LAB-OR.
IN THE NEWS
…Archtober has retuned with in-person building tours around the city, among many other ways to engage, physically and virtually, with the built environment all month long. NYRA is a media partner with Archtober, so you can expect to catch up on any event you missed right here. Going to an event yourself? Want to cover it? Write us!
…MIT Graduate Students are moving to unionize! The Architecture Lobby thought that was cool:
…NYRA-ite Katie Angen gathered 11 of the Best Design Meme Pages Worth Running Up Your Screen Time for Architectural Digest. B0ysfirm felt left out of the party:
DATELINE
The week ahead…
Friday, 10/1
Center for Architecture Reopening
4:00 PM | AIANY
Saturday, 10/2
Van Alen Block Party
1:00 PM | Van Alen Institute
Monday, 10/4
Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture with Zoe Leonard, José Esparza Chong Cuy
12:00 PM | Harvard GSD
(Leonard’s exhibition at Storefront closes Saturday!)
Rewriting Architecture with Michael Kimmelman
1:30 PM | UT Austin School of Architecture
Tuesday, 10/5
Centering Public Knowledge w/ Shannon Mattern, Karen Fairbanks, Farzana Gandhi, Shawn Rickenbacker, Dan Taeyoung
12:00 PM | Architectural League of NY, Urban Design Forum
Building the Brooklyn Bridge (1869 to 1883) with Jeffrey I. Richman
6:00 PM | The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of the City of New York
Loeb Lecture: Felon: A play; A discourse with Reginald Dwayne Betts
6:30 PM | Harvard GSD
Wednesday, 10/6
Thursday, 10/7
Book Launch: Imagining the Evident with Álvaro Siza Vieira, Francesco Dal Co, Kenneth Frampton, Peter Testa, Daniela Sá, Barry Bergdoll
12:30 PM | Columbia GSAPP
Friday, 10/08
Black in Design Conference: Black Matter with Tomi Laja, Caleb Negash, Somala Diby, Tosin Odugbemi, Wanjiku Ngare, Nicholas Gray (October 8-10)
12:00 PM | Harvard GSD African American Student Union
postcommodities…architecture after stuff Symposium with Laida Aguirre, Nicholas Korody, Michael Wang, Heather Davis, Keller Easterling, Ann Lui, Postnatural Studies Institute, New Affiliates, Seetal Solanki, Jack Halberstam, Meredith Miller
7:00 PM | University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture
For the complete list and future weeks, visit: nyra.nyc/events
Have an event we missed? Submit the details here.
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