Take a Digital Drive Along Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Boulevard, the Famous Strip That the Artist Photographed from 1965 to 2007

in Architecture, History, Photography | October 20th, 2020

Ed Ruscha has lived near­ly 65 years in Los Ange­les, but he insists that he has no par­tic­u­lar fas­ci­na­tion with the place. Not every­one believes him: is dis­in­ter­est among the many pos­si­ble feel­ings that could moti­vate a paint­ing like The Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um on Fire? Nev­er­the­less, the plain­spo­ken Okla­homa-born artist has long stuck to his sto­ry, per­haps in order to let his often cryp­tic work speak for itself. Orig­i­nal­ly trained in com­mer­cial art, Ruscha has paint­ed, print­ed, drawn, and tak­en pho­tographs, the most cel­e­brat­ed fruit of that last pur­suit being 1966’s Every Build­ing on the Sun­set Strip, a book that stitch­es his count­less pho­tographs of that famous boule­vard — both sides of it — onto one long, con­tin­u­ous page.

What­ev­er you think of such a project, you can’t accuse it of a mis­match between form and sub­stance. Nor can you call it a cyn­i­cal one-off: between 1967 and 2007, Ruscha drove Sun­set Boule­vard with his cam­era no few­er than twelve times in order to pho­to­graph most or all of its build­ings.

These include gas sta­tions (an archi­tec­tur­al form to which Ruscha has made the sub­ject of its own pho­to book as well as one of his most famous paint­ings), drug­stores, appli­ance deal­ers, Cen­tral Amer­i­can restau­rants, karate schools, trav­el agen­cies, car wash­es, Mod­ernist office tow­ers, and two of the most char­ac­ter­is­tic struc­tures of Los Ange­les: low-rise, kitschi­ly named “ding­bat” apart­ment blocks and L‑shaped “La Man­cha” strip malls.

The mix of the built envi­ron­ment varies great­ly, of course, depend­ing on where you choose to go on this 22-mile-long boule­vard, only a short stretch of which con­sti­tutes the “Sun­set Strip.” It also depends on when you choose to go: not which time of day, but which era, a choice put at your fin­ger­tips by the Get­ty Research Insti­tute’s Ed Ruscha Streets of Los Ange­les Project, and specif­i­cal­ly its inter­ac­tive fea­ture 12 Sun­sets. In it you can use your left and right arrow keys to “dri­ve” east or west (in your choice between a van, a VW Bee­tle, or Ruscha’s own trusty Dat­sun pick­up), and your up and down but­ton to flip between the year of the pho­to shoots that make up the boule­vard around you.

Many long­time Ange­lenos (or enthu­si­asts of Los Ange­les cul­ture) will motor straight to the inter­sec­tion with Horn Avenue, loca­tion of the much-mythol­o­gized Sun­set Strip Tow­er Records from which the very Amer­i­can musi­cal zeit­geist once seemed to emanate. The Sacra­men­to-found­ed store was actu­al­ly a late­com­er to Los Ange­les com­pared to Ruscha him­self, and the build­ing first appears in his third pho­to shoot, of 1973. The next year the ever-chang­ing posters on its exte­ri­or walls includes Bil­ly Joel’s Piano Man. About a decade lat­er appear the one-hit likes of Lover­boy, and in the twi­light of the 1990s the street ele­va­tion touts the Beast­ie Boys and Rob Zom­bie. In 2007, Tow­er’s sig­na­ture red and yel­low are all that remain, the chain itself hav­ing gone under (at least out­side Japan) the year before.

12 Sun­sets’ inter­face pro­vides two dif­fer­ent meth­ods to get straight from one point to anoth­er: you can either type a spe­cif­ic place name into the “loca­tion search” box on the upper right, or click the map icon on the mid­dle left to open up the line of the whole street click­able any­where from down­town Los Ange­les to the Pacif­ic Ocean. This is a much eas­i­er way of mak­ing your way along Sun­set Boule­vard than actu­al­ly dri­ving it, even in the com­par­a­tive­ly nonex­is­tent traf­fic of 1965. Nev­er­the­less, Ruscha con­tin­ues to pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment it and oth­er Los Ange­les streets, using the very same method he did 55 years ago. The build­ings keep chang­ing, but the city has nev­er stopped exud­ing its char­ac­ter­is­tic nor­mal­i­ty so intense­ly as to become eccen­tric­i­ty (and vice ver­sa). What artist wor­thy of the title would­n’t be fas­ci­nat­ed?

Explore the Get­ty Research Insti­tute’s Ed Ruscha Streets of Los Ange­les Project here.

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Ed Ruscha Reads From Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in a Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing His 1966 Pho­tos of the Sun­set Strip

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Take a Dri­ve Through 1940s, 50s & 60s Los Ange­les with Vin­tage Through-the-Car-Win­dow Films

Watch Randy Newman’s Tour of Los Ange­les’ Sun­set Boule­vard, and You’ll Love L.A. Too

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Denmark’s Utopian Garden City Built Entirely in Circles: See Astounding Aerial Views of Brøndby Haveby

in Architecture, Design | October 15th, 2020

For decades, urban plan­ners around the world have looked to the Dan­ish cap­i­tal of Copen­hagen, with its low-rise high den­si­ty and unpar­al­leled cul­ture of every­day cycling, as an exam­ple of how to design a city. But what of the Dan­ish track record in design­ing sub­urbs? Recent­ly, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er by the name of Hen­ry Do brought the world’s atten­tion to one such set­tle­ment, Brønd­by Have­by or Gar­den City, with a series of aer­i­al pho­tographs post­ed to Insta­gram. “Unre­al how my recent images from here went crazy viral,” Do writes in the cap­tion of a fol­low-up drone video — “unre­al” being just the word some have used to describe the place itself, com­posed as it is entire­ly out of cir­cles.

Built in 1964 to the design of “genius land­scape archi­tect Erik Mygind,” Brønd­by Have­by mim­ics “the tra­di­tion­al pat­terns of the 18th cen­tu­ry Dan­ish vil­lages, where peo­ple would use the mid­dle as a focal point for hang­ing out, min­gle and social inter­change between neigh­bors.”

This unusu­al form, more of which you can see in Do’s drone pho­tos at Lone­ly Plan­et, suits the long-estab­lished Dan­ish cab­in cul­ture, accord­ing to which every city-dwelling Dane with the means buys a small­er sec­ond home in the coun­try­side as a retreat. (Though the hous­es in Brønd­by Have­by are owned, the gar­dens are rent­ed, and local zon­ing laws pre­vent any­one from occu­py­ing their prop­er­ties for more than six months out of the year.)

Wher­ev­er it is, this cab­in must be made hyggelige, an adjec­tive often trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish as “cozy” and that, in recent years, has become a byword for the love of small-scale con­tent­ment that sets Den­mark apart. (Not every­body is sold on the con­cept: “With its relent­less dri­ve towards the mid­dle ground and its depen­dence on keep­ing things light and breezy,” writes British Den­mark expat Michael Booth, “hygge does get a bit bor­ing some­times.”) As Lenni Mad­sen, a Dan­ish Quo­ra user with a Brønd­by Have­by house in the fam­i­ly, puts it, “Imag­ine your aver­age small-time com­mu­ni­ty, where every­one knows every­one else, you see each oth­er across the hedge, per­haps shar­ing a beer or hav­ing cof­fee at each oth­ers’ hous­es.”

This seems a far cry from the alien­ation and deprav­i­ty of the stan­dard sub­ur­ban cul-de-sac, at least as por­trayed in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar myth. And it isn’t hard to see the appeal for aver­age urban­ites, espe­cial­ly those look­ing to spend their gen­er­ous vaca­tion time in as dif­fer­ent an envi­ron­ment as pos­si­ble with­out hav­ing to go far. (Home­own­ers must already have a pri­ma­ry res­i­dence with­in 20 kilo­me­ters, which includes the city of Copen­hagen.) The aston­ished reac­tions on social media would sug­gest that most of us have nev­er seen a place like this before. But for the Danes, it’s just anoth­er chap­ter in their civ­i­liza­tion­al pur­suit of all that is hyggelige.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

The Medieval City Plan Gen­er­a­tor: A Fun Way to Cre­ate Your Own Imag­i­nary Medieval Cities

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Incred­i­bly Detailed & Real­is­tic Maps of a City That Doesn’t Exist

IKEA Dig­i­tizes & Puts Online 70 Years of Its Cat­a­logs: Explore the Designs of the Swedish Fur­ni­ture Giant

In Search of Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Seclud­ed Hut in Nor­way: A Short Trav­el Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Story Behind the Iconic Photograph of 11 Construction Workers Lunching 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

in Architecture, History, Photography, Video - Arts & Culture | September 28th, 2020

Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Moth­er”…

Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning “The Ter­ror of War”…

Richard Drew’s “The Falling Man”…

Through­out the years, a num­ber of icon­ic pho­tographs have tapped into the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, shap­ing our view of his­toric events, some­times to a degree that leads to social change.

These images are not depen­dent on know­ing the sub­jects’ iden­ti­ties, though it’s always inter­est­ing when more con­text leaks out, often as the result of some seri­ous sleuthing by reporters, archivists, or oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties.

1932’s “Lunch atop a Sky­scraper (New York Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing on a Cross­beam)” is one of the lighter-heart­ed pho­tos to cre­ate such a last­ing pub­lic impres­sion.

Eleven work­ers are depict­ed enjoy­ing their break, relax­ing on a gird­er a dizzy­ing 840-feet above New York City, unbur­dened by safe­ty har­ness­es or oth­er pro­tec­tive gear.

In the words of Rock­e­feller Cen­ter archivist Christi­na Rous­sel, who nar­rates the TIME Mag­a­zine 100 Pho­tos episode above, they are the “unsung heroes of con­struc­tion.”

The unusu­al des­ig­na­tion may lead you to rack your brains for a sung hero of con­struc­tion.

Grandpa’s cog-in-the-wheel con­tri­bu­tion to the erec­tion of an icon­ic land­mark can be a source of anec­do­tal pride for fam­i­lies, but it rarely leads to greater renown.

Loom­ing over this image is John D. Rock­e­feller, Jr, who mas­ter­mind­ed a 22 acre com­plex of 14 com­mer­cial build­ings in the Art Deco style. The project was a boost to the econ­o­my dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, employ­ing over 250,000 people—from truck­ers and quar­ry­men to glaziers and steel­work­ers and hun­dreds of oth­er jobs in between. It cre­at­ed an enor­mous amount of good­will and patri­ot­ic pride.

The Rock­e­feller orga­ni­za­tion cap­i­tal­ized on this pos­i­tive recep­tion, with a steady stream of staged pub­lic­i­ty pho­tos, includ­ing the dar­ing eleven shar­ing a nose­bleed seat on what was to become the 69th floor of the RCA Build­ing (now known as 30 Rock.)

As film crit­ic John Ander­son, review­ing the doc­u­men­tary Men at Lunch in The New York Times, wrote:

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the pic­ture, which has been col­orized, sat­i­rized, bur­lesqued with the Mup­pets and turned into a life-size sculp­ture by Ser­gio Furnari, is part­ly about the casu­al reck­less­ness of its sub­jects: The beam on which they sit seems sus­pend­ed over an urban abyss, with the vast­ness of Cen­tral Park spread out behind them and noth­ing, seem­ing­ly below. But in fact a fin­ished floor of 30 Rock­e­feller Plaza was prob­a­bly just a few feet away.

The doc­u­men­tary helped con­firm the iden­ti­ties of sev­er­al of the men.

Irish immi­grants Mad­dy O’Shaughnessy and Son­ny Glynn hold down either end, as ver­i­fied by their sons.

William Eck­n­er, third from left, and Joe Cur­tis, third from right, were named in a sim­i­lar­ly spir­it­ed anno­tat­ed pho­to tak­en around the same time.

The man seat­ed to Cur­tis’ right may or may not be John Charles Cook of the St. Reg­is Mohawk Reser­va­tion.

The photographer’s iden­ti­ty is also debat­able. It’s most often cred­it­ed to Charles C. Ebbets but Tom Kel­ley and William Left­wich were also on hand that day, leather satchels of glass plates slung across their backs, as they, too, defied grav­i­ty, doc­u­ment­ing the com­ple­tion of archi­tect Ray­mond Hood’s mas­ter plan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Dorothea Lange Shot, Migrant Moth­er, Per­haps the Most Icon­ic Pho­to in Amer­i­can His­to­ry

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Beautiful 1897 Illustrated Book Shows How Flowers Become Art Nouveau Designs

in Architecture, Art, Books, Design, Nature | August 28th, 2020

The art of draw­ing is not the art of observ­ing forms and objects alone, it is not mere mim­ic­ry of these objects; it is the art of know­ing how far and where­in, and with what just lim­i­ta­tions, those forms and objects can be repro­duced in a pic­ture, or in a dec­o­ra­tive work. — Eugène Gras­set, 1896

Flow­ers loomed large in Art Nou­veau, from the volup­tuous flo­ral head­pieces that crowned Alphonse Mucha’s female fig­ures to the stained glass ros­es favored by archi­tect Charles Ren­nie Mack­in­tosh.

Graph­ic design­er Eugène Gras­set’s 1897 book, Plants and Their Appli­ca­tion to Orna­ment, vivid­ly demon­strates the ways in which nature was dis­tilled into pop­u­lar dec­o­ra­tive motifs at the end of the 19th-cen­tu­ry.

 

Twen­ty-four flow­er­ing plants were select­ed for con­sid­er­a­tion, from hum­ble spec­i­mens like dan­de­lions and this­tle to such Art Nou­veau heavy hit­ters as pop­pies and iris­es.

Each flower is rep­re­sent­ed by a real­is­tic botan­i­cal study, with two addi­tion­al col­or plates in which its form is flat­tened out and mined for its dec­o­ra­tive, styl­is­tic ele­ments.

 

The plates were ren­dered by Grasset’s stu­dents at the École Guérin, young artists whom he had “for­bid­den to con­de­scend to the art of base and servile imi­ta­tion”:

The art of draw­ing is not the art of observ­ing forms and objects alone, it is not mere mim­ic­ry of these objects; it is the art of know­ing how far and where­in, and with what just lim­i­ta­tions, those forms and objects can be repro­duced in a pic­ture, or in a dec­o­ra­tive work.

He also expect­ed stu­dents to hone their pow­ers of obser­va­tion through intense study of the organ­ic struc­tures that would pro­vide their inspi­ra­tion, becom­ing inti­mate­ly acquaint­ed with the char­ac­ter of petal, leaf, and stem:

Beau­ti­ful lines are the foun­da­tion of all beau­ty. In a work of art, what­ev­er it be, appar­ent or hid­den sym­me­try is the vis­i­ble or secret cause of the plea­sure we feel. Every­thing that is cre­at­ed must have some rep­e­ti­tion in its parts to be under­stood, retained in the mem­o­ry, and per­ceived as a whole

When it came to adorn­ing house­hold imple­ments such as vas­es and plates, Gras­set insist­ed that dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments exist in har­mo­ny with their hosts, snip­ing that any artist who would dis­tort form with ill con­sid­ered flour­ish­es should make a bas-relief instead.

Thus­ly do chrysan­the­mum stems pro­vide log­i­cal-look­ing bal­last for a chan­de­lier, and a dandelion’s curved leaves hug the con­tours of a table leg.

Gras­set’s best known stu­dent, Mau­rice Pil­lard Verneuil, whose career spanned Art Nou­veau to Art Deco, absorbed and artic­u­lat­ed the master’s teach­ings:

 

It is no longer the nature (artists) see that they rep­re­sent, that they tran­scribe, but the nature that they aspire to see; nature more per­fect and more beau­ti­ful and of which they have the inte­ri­or vision.

 

View Eugène Grasset’s Plants and Their Appli­ca­tion to Orna­ment as part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here. Or find illus­tra­tions at Raw­Pix­el.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826 )

Beau­ti­ful Hand-Col­ored Japan­ese Flow­ers Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ogawa Kazu­masa (1896)

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Japanese Sculptor Who Dedicated His Life to Finishing Gaudí’s Magnum Opus, the Sagrada Família

in Architecture, Film | August 24th, 2020

“Ven­go de Japón.” With those words Japan­ese sculp­tor Etsuro Sotoo intro­duces him­self to us in “Stone Cut,” the short film from NOWNESS above. Since com­ing to Barcelona in 1978, Sotoo has not just mas­tered the Span­ish lan­guage but con­vert­ed to Roman Catholi­cism and ded­i­cat­ed much of his life to labor­ing on the com­ple­tion of the most famous build­ing in Spain: Antoni Gaudí’s mag­num opus, the Basíli­ca de la Sagra­da Família. Not that it was quite so revered when Sotoo first encoun­tered it: “Back in the day, no one real­ly cared about Sagra­da Famil­ia,” he says. “There were stones and rub­ble, but it was most­ly an aban­doned ruin. This sit­u­a­tion last­ed many decades.” 

Even the young Sotoo him­self had no inter­est in the archi­tect of Sagra­da Famil­ia, but “back then it was manda­to­ry to know Gaudí’s name. Slow­ly, my inter­est in Gaudí start­ed to grow in me. And today it keeps grow­ing.” As it should: for more than 40 years now, Sotoo has worked to com­plete what Gaudí left unfin­ished at the time of his death in 1926, a decade before the out­break of the Span­ish Civ­il War. That bit­ter con­flict not only put a stop to the con­struc­tion of Sagra­da Famil­ia for near­ly two decades, it also dam­aged what had already been built: the sculp­tures of its Por­ta del Rosari, for exam­ple, which it has fall­en to Sotoo to restore.

Sculp­tures con­sti­tute much of the elab­o­rate dec­o­ra­tion of Sagra­da Famil­i­a’s exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or, both of which present the view­er with nary a straight line nor a flat sur­face. Even in the incom­plete build­ing, the effect is at once organ­ic and oth­er­world­ly. “Gaudí is way beyond where we are today,” says Sotoo, and his film­mak­ing coun­try­man Hiroshi Teshi­ga­hara must have shared that sen­ti­ment, hav­ing paid trib­ute to the archi­tect with a wor­ship­ful 1984 doc­u­men­tary. The project of real­iz­ing the archi­tec­t’s unprece­dent­ed aes­thet­ic vision — the result of a con­ver­sa­tion “with God about some­thing very big and pro­found” — con­tin­ues to this day, 138 years after the com­mence­ment of its con­struc­tion, which moved slow­ly even dur­ing Gaudí’s life­time. “My client,” his­to­ry remem­bers him hav­ing said, “is not in a hur­ry.”

The cur­rent push to com­plete Sagra­da Famil­ia has a more press­ing dead­line: the year 2026, the cen­te­nary of Gaudí’s death, at which time less than a quar­ter of the project was com­plete. (You can see a 3D ren­der­ing of the remain­der of the process in this video from the Sagra­da Famil­ia Foun­da­tion, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.) But that time frame only cov­ers com­ple­tion of the struc­ture, includ­ing the eigh­teen spires Gaudí envi­sioned as rep­re­sent­ing the Twelve Apos­tles, the Vir­gin Mary, the four Evan­ge­lists, and Jesus Christ. The dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments should be fin­ished by the ear­ly 2030s, grant­i­ng more breath­ing room to arti­sans like Sotoo — who, hav­ing spent four-decades being reshaped by Gaudí him­self, knows that archi­tec­tur­al genius can’t be rushed.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Antoni Gaudí’s Unfin­ished Mas­ter­piece, the Sagra­da Família, Get Final­ly Com­plet­ed in 60 Sec­onds

The Isamu Noguchi Muse­um Puts Online an Archive of 60,000 Pho­tographs, Man­u­scripts & Dig­i­tized Draw­ings by the Japan­ese Sculp­tor

A Vir­tu­al Time-Lapse Recre­ation of the Build­ing of Notre Dame (1160)

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course Mov­ing from Ancient Greece to Roco­co

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A New Interactive Map Shows All Four Million Buildings That Existed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

in Architecture, History, Maps, Photography, Travel | August 19th, 2020

New York­ers have borne wit­ness to a notice­able uptick in the num­ber of shiny, new build­ings going up in the city over the last few years, crowd­ing the water­front, ris­ing from the ash­es of com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and old­er, infi­nite­ly more mod­est struc­tures.

Their devel­op­ers have tak­en care to top load them with luxu­ry ameni­ties—rooftop cabanas, 24-hour fit­ness clubs, mar­ble coun­ter­tops, screen­ing rooms.

But one thing they can’t pro­vide is the sense of lived his­to­ry that imbues every old build­ing with a true sense of char­ac­ter, mys­tique, and oft-grub­by charm.

I fear that the occu­pants of these new­er build­ings won’t have near­ly as much fun as the rest of us search­ing for our cur­rent address­es on the NYC Munic­i­pal Archives’ inter­ac­tive map, above.

Every dot rep­re­sents a Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion pho­to­graph of a New York City build­ing, snapped between 1939 and 1941 as a means of stan­dard­iz­ing the way in which prop­er­ty val­ues were assessed and record­ed.

There are 4,282,000 dots, spread out between five bor­oughs.

Does that sound dense­ly packed?

You should see it today… there’s been a lot of ver­ti­cal build.

This unas­sum­ing fuel oil plant near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has giv­en way to a 430-unit build­ing boast­ing a yoga room, spin stu­dios, and valet ser­vices for those in need of dry-clean­ing, laun­dry, apart­ment clean­ing, or dog walking…though sad­ly, no on-premis­es motor oil. We find that omis­sion some­what sur­pris­ing for such a full-ser­vice res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment on the banks of a Super­fund site, whose clean up is esti­mat­ed to tip the scales at $500 mil­lion.

We also won­der what the occu­pants of the above build­ings would have made of the glassy 25-sto­ry com­plex that opened on their coor­di­nates ear­li­er this year. Is it just us, or does it seem a bit disin­gen­u­ous of its devel­op­ers to trum­pet that its loca­tion is “the epit­o­me of New York City’s authen­tic­i­ty, with over a cen­tu­ry of rich his­to­ry, where the world’s sar­to­r­i­al and culi­nary trends are born”?

(You can find us a few blocks away mut­ter­ing into our chopped liv­er at Russ and Daugh­ters, a ven­er­a­ble food shop that looks much the same today as it did in 1940, though you’ll have to con­firm with a bit of research on your own if you don’t want to take our word for it, the WPA “dot” reveal­ing lit­tle more than a man with a stick and sev­er­al mov­ing vehi­cles.)

Our final stop is one of many archi­tec­tur­al ghosts to haunt the Hud­son Yards colos­sus, the self-described “epi­cen­ter of Manhattan’s New West Side… a bea­con for cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, a hub for fash­ion, design, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and art.” In addi­tion to a much reviled $200 mil­lion shawar­ma-shaped “3‑dimensional pub­lic space” and state of the art wine fridges, ameni­ties now include diag­nos­tic and anti­body test­ing “per­formed by top med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.”

It’s telling that in the sum­mer of 2020, prospec­tive ten­ants were offered incen­tives includ­ing two months’ free rent and a $2,000 gift card.

Proof, per­haps, that New York will con­tin­ue as it always has—a city in con­stant flux. The preva­lence of mod­ern high rise build­ings in dystopi­an fic­tion gives us pause.…

Explore the Street View of 1940s New York here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Inter­ac­tive Map That Cat­a­logues the 700,000 Trees Shad­ing the Streets of New York City

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Wine Windows of Renaissance Florence Dispense Wine Safely Again During COVID-19

in Architecture, Food & Drink, History, Life, Travel | August 10th, 2020

Every­thing old is new again and Tuscany’s buchette del vino—wine windows—are def­i­nite­ly rolling with the times.

As Lisa Har­vey ear­li­er report­ed in Atlas Obscu­ra, buchette del vino became a thing in 1559, short­ly after Cosi­mo I de’ Medici decreed that Flo­rence-dwelling vine­yard own­ers could bypass tav­erns and wine mer­chants to sell their prod­uct direct­ly to the pub­lic. Wealthy wine fam­i­lies eager to pay less in tax­es quick­ly fig­ured out a workaround that would allow them to take advan­tage of the edict with­out requir­ing them to actu­al­ly open their palace doors to the rab­ble:

Any­one on the street could use the wood­en or met­al knock­er … and rap on a wine win­dow dur­ing its open hours. A well-respect­ed, well-paid ser­vant, called a can­ti­niere and trained in prop­er­ly pre­serv­ing wine, stood on the oth­er side. The can­ti­niere would open the lit­tle door, take the customer’s emp­ty straw-bot­tomed flask and their pay­ment, refill the bot­tle down in the can­ti­na (wine cel­lar), and hand it back out to the cus­tomer on the street.

Sev­en­ty years fur­ther on, these lit­er­al holes-in-the-walls served as a means of con­tact­less deliv­ery for post-Renais­sance Ital­ians in need of a drink as the sec­ond plague pan­dem­ic raged.

Schol­ar Francesco Rondinel­li (1589–1665) detailed some of the extra san­i­ta­tion mea­sures put in place in the ear­ly 1630s:

A met­al pay­ment col­lec­tion scoop replaced hand-to-hand exchange

Imme­di­ate vine­gar dis­in­fec­tion of all col­lect­ed coins

No exchange of emp­ty flasks brought from home

Cus­tomers who insist­ed on bring­ing their own reusable bot­tles could do self-serve refills via a met­al tube, to pro­tect the essen­tial work­er on the oth­er side of the win­dow.

Sound famil­iar?

After cen­turies of use, the win­dows died out, falling vic­tim to flood, WWII bomb­ings, fam­i­ly relo­ca­tions, and archi­tec­tur­al ren­o­va­tion.

The nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has def­i­nite­ly played a major role in putting wine win­dows back on the public’s radar, but Babae, a casu­al year-old restau­rant gets cred­it for being the first to reac­ti­vate a dis­used buchet­ta del vino for its intend­ed pur­pose, sell­ing glass­es of red for a sin­gle hour each day start­ing in August 2019.

Now sev­er­al oth­er authen­tic buchette have returned to ser­vice, with menus expand­ed to accom­mo­date serv­ings of ice cream and cof­fee.

Giv­en this suc­cess, per­haps they’ll take a cue from Japan’s 4.6 mil­lion vend­ing machines, and begin dis­pens­ing an even wider array of items.

They may even take a page from the past, and send some of the mon­ey they take in back out, along with food and yes—wine—to sus­tain needy mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.

The Buchette del Vino Asso­ci­azi Cul­tur­ale cur­rent­ly lists 146 active and inac­tive wine win­dows in Flo­rence and the sur­round­ing regions, accom­pa­ny­ing their find­ings with pho­tos and arti­cles of his­tor­i­cal rel­e­vance.

Via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Quar­an­tined Ital­ians Send a Mes­sage to Them­selves 10 Days Ago: What They Wish They Knew Then

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

A Free Course from MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 CE: Explore Stunning Recreations of The Forum, Colosseum and Other Monuments

in Architecture, History, Technology | August 5th, 2020

If you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of this site, you’re like­ly famil­iar with the sim­u­la­tion hypoth­e­sis, the idea that con­scious expe­ri­ence is noth­ing more than a com­put­er pro­gram. This con­cept has many sci-fi impli­ca­tions, from Matrix-like sce­nar­ios to the rad­i­cal idea that every­thing in the uni­verse is soft­ware, run by incom­pre­hen­si­ble beings who might as well be gods. One of the more plau­si­ble ver­sions sug­gests that we are liv­ing in an “ances­tor sim­u­la­tion,” designed by future human soci­eties to recre­ate their past.

Pre­sum­ably, sim­u­lat­ed ances­tors would cre­ate their own ances­tor sim­u­la­tions and so on, ad infini­tum. There’s no way to know where on the con­tin­u­um we fall, but wher­ev­er it is, ances­tor sim­u­la­tions are on the way… maybe. They’re rudi­men­ta­ry at the moment, con­sist­ing of immer­sive video games and VR recre­ations of ancient cities.

Each iter­a­tion, how­ev­er, is bet­ter than the last, as we have seen in the case of Rome Reborn (or Rome Reborn®), a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el­ing project designed to recre­ate the city’s archi­tec­ture as it was in 320 CE, through expert ren­der­ings informed by archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­ans and “vir­tu­al archae­ol­o­gists” like Dr. Bernard Frisch­er, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia.

Back in a 2012 Open Cul­ture post, Matthias Rasch­er explained the sig­nif­i­cance of this year, “when Rome’s pop­u­la­tion had reached its peak (about one mil­lion) and the first Chris­t­ian church­es were being built.” His­to­ri­ans will also rec­og­nize 320 as fol­low­ing direct­ly on the heels of the Dona­tion of Con­stan­tine that gave the city to the Pope. We can tour the vir­tu­al streets of this rapid­ly chang­ing ancient city, though the bur­geon­ing pop­u­la­tion is nowhere in evi­dence. Noth­ing moves, grows, or changes in Rome Reborn. In that sense it is still like so many pre­vi­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions of antiq­ui­ty.

Now in ver­sion 3.0, Rome Reborn began as a 3D mod­el in 2007, and was first owned by the Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia. It now oper­ates, under the aus­pices of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, as a pri­vate com­pa­ny called Fly­over Zone. They have oth­er such dig­i­tal recre­ations in their prod­uct line, includ­ing “Athens Reborn®, Hadri­an’s Vil­la Reborn®, Baal­bek Reborn®, Egypt Reborn®, and His­tor­i­cal Games®.” Rome Reborn’s design­er, Dani­la Logi­nov, has released increas­ing­ly detailed pro­mos of the project over the years, and you can see these many videos here.

To ful­ly expe­ri­ence this sim­u­lat­ed Rome, you’ll need a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty head­set. The third ver­sion of the 3D mod­el has been made pub­licly avail­able. “You can immerse your­self in the ancient city and even enter into some of its most famous build­ings while lis­ten­ing to the com­men­tary of high­ly qual­i­fied experts,” the Rome Reborn site promis­es. Famous build­ings one might explore include the Roman forum and the Basil­i­ca of Max­en­tius. It is not an expe­ri­ence based in real­ism. In some of the sim­u­la­tions “you can opt for a whirl­wind  fly­over tour of the city,” notes Meilan Sol­ly at Smith­son­ian.

This rough­ly two-hour tour is like noth­ing any ancient Roman ever expe­ri­enced. “Com­par­a­tive­ly, the two site vis­its place users in the driver’s seat,” Sol­ly writes, “afford­ing them free­dom to roam through recon­struct­ed streets and halls.” It’s not quite the stuff of a sim­u­lat­ed uni­verse just yet, but it may not be too far in the future before Rome Reborn® ful­ly lives up to its name. Learn more about ancient Rome, cir­ca 320 CE, in the videos here, and learn more about Rome Reborn at their offi­cial site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

French Illus­tra­tor Revives the Byzan­tine Empire with Mag­nif­i­cent­ly Detailed Draw­ings of Its Mon­u­ments & Build­ings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast