Space: It’s Still a Frontier

By ALLISON ARIEFF
Via blogs.nytimes.com

Sterling Ridge I (c) 2008 Christoph Gielen. Courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.
Sterling Ridge I, Florida, 2009. Click to enlarge.

“Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It’s time we gave this some thought.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller

That quote is 40 years old, but I continue to be amazed by the extent to which we haven’t begun to address the problem Fuller highlighted. There’s a staggering glut of empty space around the country right now, unused space that’s not doing anyone much good. That in itself isn’t new; what is unprecedented is our ability to visualize that data in an entirely new ways.

The ability to use G.I.S. (geographic information systems) to locate data spatially, for example, is one reason Barack Obama is president today. His campaign turned a database of voters and volunteers into a map and was able to strategize house by house about how to get those votes. More broadly, G.I.S. allows us to literally view our place both globally and in a hyperlocal context.

That level of specificity, both at the micro and macro level, is helping revolutionize the way we think about, plan for and design the space we inhabit (or abandon). A visual map can show us patterns of overbuilding, abandonment, mis- (or lack of) use; it can teach us something about our current tendency to overbuild.

How can this now-instantaneous access to data add clarity to ingrained patterns, and perhaps allow us to change those patterns according to evolving needs and requirements?

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Via nicholas.demonchaux.com

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Via sf.streetsblog.org
by Matthew Roth on September 24, 2009

A proposed design for an unaccepted street, from Local Code, courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux

Throughout San Francisco’s history, from the early street grid to the more recent expansion of freeways, slivers of land that don’t fit into the master plans of architects and designers have been cast aside, lumped into a category the Department of Public Works (DPW) refers to as "unaccepted streets." These "paper streets" are mapped but not maintained by any agency. As Chris Carlsson so beautifully chronicled in his Ghost Streets tour, many of these alleys and street stubs are cared for by neighbors and transformed into small gardens or pocket parks.  Many more, however, are forgotten urban scars and latent public space.

Berkeley Professor of Architecture Nicholas de Monchaux estimates that there are 529 acres of unaccepted streets, just over half the land area of Golden Gate Park. In Local Code [PDF], one of six finalists in UCLA’s WPA 2.0 design competition ("Whoever rules the sewers, rules the city"), de Monchaux details his vision for replenishing 1514 of these unaccepted streets by linking contemporary geospatial planning tools with existing public processes through the DPW to implement  "a range of local infrastructural gestures, from soil remediation, to victory gardening, to playgrounds and pastures."  

Local Code borrows from the work of  "anarchitect" Gordon Matta-Clark, who in the early 1970s discovered that New York City auctioned off pieces of unusable land that resulted from surveying anomalies and public-works expansion, so called "gutterspaces," fifteen of which he purchased and developed for Fake Estates, an architectural intervention meant to dissect notions of materiality, property ownership, and prestige.

With Local Code, de Monchaux hopes to accelerate the pace of converting streets into green spaces, particularly in the underserved neighborhoods in the shadows of freeways, where unaccepted streets are abundant.  "If you look at the unaccepted streets, it is like heat map of all the areas with health problems, pollution issues, and neglected spaces," he said.

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Drink in hand, he settled into the numb nothingness of his self-imposed isolation.

(Photo: Daniel Hennessy; Dwell, November 2006)

Via unhappyhipsters.com

Unable to complete another painting, he surrendered to the realization that he was truly…madly…deeply in love—with plywood.

(Photo: Richard Powers; Dwell, March 2009)

Via unhappyhipsters.com

Here’s an excerpt of a website from the Australian government with some good information and advice on energy usage and conservation. Via yourhome.gov.au:

The average household’s energy use is responsible for over seven tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions can be significantly reduced through use of renewable energy, more efficient appliances and energy conservation measures. The Energy Use group of fact sheets shows you how.

Choosing the most appropriate energy source can significantly reduce your energy bills and improve the environmental performance of your home. A choice of energy sources is available to new home buyers, existing owners and tenants.

Conventional electricity from the supply grid currently produces the largest amount of CO2 of any energy source per unit of energy used, except in Tasmania where hydro electric power is the predominant source of electricity. Hydropower is used to a lesser extent in some other states, with fossil fuel power stations providing most of the electricity on the Australian mainland.

Renewable energy sources produce no greenhouse gases in operation and reduce or eliminate the need for additional coal fired power stations and large hydro-electric dams.

Natural gas produces only about one third the greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional electricity.

Minimizing demand for energy through conservation and efficiency is the most cost effective means of reducing operational and environmental costs for all home owners and tenants.

Space heating and cooling and water heating account for nearly 63 per cent of household energy use.

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