Catastrophic Space, Partizan Publik produced an online audio tour. Click here and join Beirut’s artist and architect Tony Chakar’s personal walking through the city and listen to an inspiring analysis of time and place as the result of catastrophe.
If you have the chance, check this movie out. I saw it a while ago in Istanbul at the Independent Filmfestival And now it’s coming to the movie theaters.
An unbelievable reality is portrayed in the film, accompanied by a great hiphop soundtrack by Wyclef Jean. “An epic portrait of a family and a culture torn apart by poverty and violence, Ghosts of Cite Soleil is a powerful and unsettling documentary that takes us inside the lives of the notorious gang leaders who dominate the Haitian slum of Cite Soleil, one of the most desperate communities in the Western hemisphere.”
Delft School of Design, New York.
very nice… Delft’s ambition in the theory department rooting.
I decided not to do any PHd, but now, I might have to reconsider with this tempting forsight on Essex street 131
Delft School of Design dsd.tudelft.nl
Upcoming, SimCity Societies, I just watched a demo and it’s really the architects petri-dish for Utopia’s, Dystopia’s, Disneylands and Wastelands. Read this quote from 1up:
“As the working title implies, Societies adds a new layer of emphasis on the city’s citizens. The game introduces six “social energies” (such as Wealth or Obedience) that influence your city’s look and feel. Buildings and aesthetics change depending on how these six values develop. Focus on Obedience, for example, and your buildings will start automatically adding security cameras to monitor your citizens’ movements, Orwellian-style. Different energy balances unlock different building types, too.”
It reminded me of a debate in architectural discourse about whether just purely physical changes in the built environment can really change the social characteristic of an area. Herbert Gans replied in his essay ‘Urban Vitality and the Fallacy of Physical Determinism’ (part of the book ‘People, Plans, and Policies‘, with criticism on city planning as a vehicle for social reform, such as proposed by Jane Jacobs
Watch, the demo and the explanation of the driving theories behind the game
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