~Yale Arts Library Blog~

Todd Eberle

From Mao to Wow! Kurt Andersen Vanity Fair August 2008

When it comes to urban analogies, though, New York City actually seems more apt. Beijing’s historic core—the area with Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the main national government buildings, and some of the few remaining hutong neighborhoods—contains 1.3 million people in its 24 square miles, almost exactly the same as Manhattan; fully urbanized Beijing closely tracks the five boroughs of New York City in area and population; and the greater Chinese capital is about the same size as metropolitan New York.

But having just visited for the first time, I realized that what early-21st-century Beijing even more deeply resembles is New York at the turn of the 20th century. That’s the moment at which modern New York was inventing itself by showstopping leaps and bounds—swallowing adjacent cities and towns and farms, booming in population, and erecting what would become its defining landmarks.

For an interactive map of architectural monuments in Beijing click here.

And more on China’s monumental ambitions at this old post.

Edit: Another very good, lengthy article from The International Herald Tribune here.

Posted by Chris

Good article in the Courant about two architectural mistakes made by Yale in New Haven and how they are being remedied.

Yale’s Architectural Do-Overs Philip Langdon Hartford Courant 3/23/08

“Yale’s other significant recent architectural mistake occurred in the mid-1990s when the university built Henry R. Luce Hall. Designed by New York architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, Luce is strange-looking and widely disliked. It faces Hillhouse but is set far back, behind a grassy forecourt. The rear of the building, with narrow slits for its most prominent windows, is visible from Prospect Street, yet it seems aloof from that street as well. The result, architectural historian Vincent Scully has said, was ‘the instant destruction of two great streets.’”

Posted by Chris

Responding to the chronic lack of space in the city, Zwarts and Jansma Architects have made plans for a vast underground city beneath Amsterdam. Already approved by the Amsterdam City Council, construction is slated to begin in 2018.

New underground city planned for Amsterdam Michael Hammond WorldArchitecture News.com 2/12/08

“Amsterdam sits on a 30-metre layer of waterproof clay which will be used together with concrete and sand to make new walls. Once we have resealed the canal floor, we will be able to carry on working underneath while pouring water back into the canals. It’s an easy technique and it doesn’t create issues with drilling noises on the streets.”

Read more here.

Posted by Chris

Backed by a $22 Billion endowment, President Levin has given the go-ahead for the construction of record breaking $600 Million dorms.

Levin Backs Expansion Thomas Kaplan YDN 2/19/08

“Preliminary projections in University budget documents obtained by the News this fall placed the construction cost of the two colleges, not to mention the proposed third building to be erected at the site, at close to $600 million. That cost would make them the most expensive residence halls ever erected on the campus of an American university.”

Read the full report here.

Posted by Chris

Charles Lane explores the motivations of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as he undergoes a massive project to move the poor of his country into Utopian ’socialist’ metropolis’.

Chavez challenges nature as well as democracy Charles Lane The Morning Call 12/02/07

“Chavez acts on an ideology that anthropologist James C. Scott of Yale has called ‘high modernism’…Central to high modernism is an aesthetic sense that prefers straight lines and right angles to the crooked pathways and sprawling gardens of spontaneous rural development…Architecturally and ecologically unsustainable, high modernist projects always collapse of their own weight sooner or later.”

More on Chavez’s planned ’socialist cities’ here.

Posted by Chris

image: Stephen Vincent Kobasa

Stephen Kobasa invokes such architectural associations as the Pantheon in Rome, Lewis Carroll’s playing cards and the lost city of Atlantis in his glowing review of Paul Rudolph’s Temple Street Garage.

Classical Garage: Rediscovering a work of art behind the wreckage Stephen Kobasa New Haven Advocate 11/29/07

“Reimagining the vaults of the Emperor Trajan’s markets or the Coliseum cellars, the architect gives the building monumentality without dehumanizing scale. The low walls at each level, punched out with broken pediments, make motion seem imminent. It is as if this were some great breathing machine, with its slabs on hinges where we expect them to expand and contract.”

Posted by Chris

The Earth Architecture website is a great resource that focuses on architecture constructed of mud brick, rammed earth, compressed earth block and other methods of earthen construction.

And if you’re able, check out “Lasting Foundations: The Art of Architecture in Africa” which runs through Jan. 13 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.. You can read a review of the show here.

Also take a look at a documentary of about the history and possible future of earth architecture, Future of Mud. More on recyclable and natural building materials here and here.

Posted by Chris

Jane Jacobs at the Whitehorse Tavern, NYC, 1960s. Photo: Cervin Robinson.

The Municipal Art Society in Manhattan has a new exhibit honoring one of the patron saints of urban theory: Janes Jacobs, author of the classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The show runs through January 5th and is largely a tribute to Jacobs’s theory that cities, New York City of the 1950s in particular, have a rhythm and life of their own, involving self-regulation, mixed use buildings, and an overall dynamism that cannot be planned… exactly what eventually happened in cities across the country, including New York, not to mention here in New Haven.

If I a not mistaken, Jacobs spent the last portion of her life living in Toronto.

Read a review of the exhibit: Edward Rothstein. Jane Jacobs, Foe of Plans and Friend of City Life. New York Times. September 25, 2007.

Posted by: Ian M.

(Photo: Peter Funch)

An interesting article in New York magazine by Clive Thompson recently questioned why the life expectancy of New York residents is significantly higher then the national average. While much of this has to do with more wealthy people moving into the city, Thompson argues that the structure of the city itself also contributes to the healthiness of its residents. New Yorkers walk a lot and do it fast. Thompson also cites the proximity of parks and the positive benefits of community living as factors.

He doesn’t fail to note though that the population of the city is basically self-selecting. The Bronx, which hasn’t experienced the gentrification that the rest of the city has, has actually seen a decrease in life-expectancy recently.

Why New Yorkers Last Longer Clive Thompson 8/20/07 New York Magazine

Also interesting is this article from the New Yorker which makes the case that New York is the greenest city in America.

Posted by Chris