A few days ago, I got into a discussion with a friend about how the Occupy Wall Street protests are “jamming up the city” (NYC). She felt like they shouldn’t block traffic or occupy the bridges, doing so, she reasoned, hurts other people and goes beyond their right to free speech/ expression.
I took a moderate pro-anarchist stance and said they shouldn’t aim to disrupt infrastructure, but the protests are important, and if they happen to block traffic or cause noise, then so be it.
The discussion turned toward the conflicts the protesters have with the police. The renegotiation of the contested space (via shouts and cameras and newspaper articles and pepper spray and arrests) is constant. My friend believes that the police sympathize with the protester’s goals and ideas, but are committed to doing their job to maintain order. This cognitive dissonance is driving the police toward wits-end (plus the city is running out of overtime money).
Be that as it may, I was more interested in the urbanist aspects of the whole thing, and of course I dragged the discussion into a talk about Urban form.
Essentially, the conflicts with the police come down to the fact that the protesters cannot protest on the scale they desire while obeying all of the various laws and regulations, the infrastructure cannot possibly bear it. To resolve this, the protesters have developed a “we don’t need permits and sanctions, it’s a goddamn protest” mentality.
The average, middle class, fair-minded police officer, in turn, is doing his/ her best to protect everyone and their interests. (Lets ignore the corrupt superior officers, the biased media for a minute, and the rich “1%” who influence them both).
I’m not suggesting that the city should have been designed with such a bloated scale that it could accommodate such rare occurrences, but I am pointing out that these skirmishes are to be expected. Urban space is all about negotiation, and the city is doing everything it can to close down the discussion, leaving only the language of physical bodies to sort out who has the right to be where.
I’ve been having trouble writing posts because I get too into them, and they turn into massive projects that get started… but never finished. I just like writing too much, I think. So, instead of doing *that*, I’m going to try mixing it up with some micro-blog posts.
The role of architecture and revolution is interesting. I’m always intrigued by architects who respond to socio-political events, or try to craft styles to represent specific institutions (eg, these). Its sort of an on-going informal research topic of mine.
While standing in the middle of the PSEG Plaza “Amphitheater”, I noticed the really awesome sound attenuation qualities of the space. We were speaking in normal voices, but the curvature of the massive space was reflecting the sound back at us, loud enough to hear. Which got me thinking about the #Occupy Wall Street protests (I love the hash tag, because in my mind it represents the digital origin/ nature of the protest).
At the protests, they are forbidden from using “amplified sound”, which the police have interpreted to include a ban on mega-phones. So instead, the protesters use a “Peoples Mic” to give speeches; wherein one person yells a line, and those that hear it repeat it, and those that hear that repeat it, and so on, so that speeches radiate like waves through a crowd (like an analogue twitter).
The space is sort of unhelpful, at best. Imagine if the park had a better shape for public assembly? Bam, there you have it, Architecture which supports protest, urban space as a type of active advocate for political discourse.
One per week. Every Saturday.
If these people can make things of beauty, maybe so can I.
tag: non-spatial space
tag: fabrication
tag: sci-fi ID
tag: tips and tricks
tag: abstractions/ fields
tag: abstractions/ fields
One per week. Every Saturday.
If these people can make things of beauty, maybe so can I.
tag: non-spatial space
tag: fabrication
tag: sci-fi ID
tag: tips and tricks
tag: abstractions/ fields
Before doing our case studies, we went out and saw Lincoln Center as a type of successful public space. It just sort of worked out well that my case study was actually of Lincoln Center.
One per week. Every Saturday.
If these people can make things of beauty, maybe so can I.
tag: skills, tips, and tricks
tag: steampunk design
tag: collage art
tag: graphic art
tag: PoMo Theory
I’ve started trying to pin down this idea of a “field condition”. Its sort of like wrestling with an eel, except the eel is made of abstractions. At any rate, the poster came out really nicely, and it was a good first attempt to organize my thoughts regards fields.
We’re officially starting the design phase of our project, so I wanted to get the research phase posted before I could lose any of it. Here is some of the research I did about the present and future of what we’re calling the “Military Park Historical Commons District” (MPHCD).
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