A new tower in Milan is being billed not as a skyscraper, but as a vertical forest:
They say it only adds 5% to construction costs, which I imagine would easily be recouped through the premium in rent this tower would surely get. They also say that to provide the same amount of vegetation at sprawl-level density would require 50,000 sq meters of land.
I think it’s a really interesting idea, and I hope it works, but the practicalities of managing this seem to say it won’t. I mean, are you going to plant trees by helicopter when one dies? And, is that cost acceptable for the benefit of having this “living architecture”? What do you think?
#In case anyone needed another reason to dislike Frank Gehry
This will probably help you out.
So, since around 2008, the U.S. has wanted to build a memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower. They held a competition, and Gehry’s team won. They have since worked 3 years to produce this:
Apparently, the giant limestone columns “pay homage to the memorial traditions of the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials,” and support woven stainless steel mesh panels with images from Eisenhower’s life, communicating “Eisenhower’s humility, humble origins, and quiet use of power, the ‘classic American archetype of the self-made hero’.”
They also supplied these perspectives of the site, presumably in an effort to make people hate the design even more:
Personally, I think it’s horrible. Unequivocally terrible. The only remotely feasible explanation for this design? Gehry has decided to memorialize Eisenhower by invoking what may be his most lasting presidential achievement: the Interstate Highway System.
Giant fancy billboards with Eisenhower’s face on them, framing the U.S. Capitol and blocking the Department of Education building.
For those not in the know, Mississippi is voting on what is called a “personhood” amendment on November 8. The campaign’s been going on for a while, and it’s starting to gain the attention of the national press. The text of the proposed amendment is very simple, reading “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”
Reasons for voting for or against this amendment are being hashed out all over the internet, but I feel like so much of the discussion is wrongheaded (or simply wrong). My wife and I have thought a lot about this, and I wanted to post my reasons for all to see. I will go ahead and say that I am a Christian, and I fully believe that life starts at conception. I have a baby on the way, and I believe that it is a person, and was from the get-go. However, this proposed amendment is misguided, and these are the reasons why.
Reason #1: You can’t prove it.
Like I said before, I believe wholeheartedly that life begins at conception. But that’s all it is: a belief. A great post here runs down the reasons why this is a belief and not science. Suffice it to say, conception is not a set point in time, but a biological process.
Whether you believe this is a worthy argument to make goes back to what your vision of America is. If you believe in the David Barton version of a “Christian” America, then you would make the argument that we are founded on Christian principles, and therefore this law fits within that tradition. The problem with this is view is that it’s wrong. I could into more detail about this, but that link lays it out pretty clearly.
If you believe that the United States was founded as a free nation, with freedoms equally applied to all, then you understand why proof is so important. Not everyone believes what you believe. Not everyone agrees that life begins at conception. We may disagree, but they are totally entitled to their point of view. Simultaneously, they are totally entitled to not have our point of view forced upon them. And if we are a free nation, then a personhood law applied to all must prove that personhood begins at birth. And it can’t.
Reason #2: It’s bad legislation.
Some of the attraction to the amendment is how straightforward it is. No fine print, no legalese. But herein lies the problem. People seem to be supporting this because they think it’s a nice thought, and it is. We’re not voting on a nice thought, though; we’re voting on a constitutional amendment. The supreme law of the state.
The funny thing about law is, it has to be interpreted. It has implications. And the less specific a law is, the more implications it has. Think about it. Forget abortion for a second, even though that’s the most obvious effect the law would have. Think about people who can only get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization; that’s out. What about IUDs? Those are out too. We can live without those, you might say, and fine. We could. But take it a step further.
This would not have been a big issue to me unless I knew how often miscarriages occurred: around 25% of pregnancies, if my wife’s doctor is to be believed. So, if life begins at conception, then what is a miscarriage? Did the mother kill it? Did God kill it? How do we know? Are we going to investigate every miscarriage to ensure that the mother did everything right? People say that it won’t come to this, but if it does not, then by the word of the proposed law potential murder is being ignored. At the very least, you would have to obtain a death certificate every time you miscarried. Do you really want to put the power of miscarriage investigation into the legislature’s hands? I would rather they didn’t have that power to begin with.
Or take another example. Say an out-of-state couple is visiting in Mississippi, going to Natchez or seeing a football game. They enjoy a nice dinner and have a romantic night. Sounds great, right? But she has an IUD. So is she guilty of something? Is her husband an accomplice? Do we make sure out-of-state women can’t come here and have sex? It sounds ridiculous, but by the word of the law, if a woman with an IUD came to Mississippi and had sex, she could be just as guilty as someone who came from out-of-state and shot someone. And that’s insane.
The Yes to 26 website dismisses these scenarios as unfounded worrying, but that’s simply not true. Logic, people.
Reason #3: It’s Pharisaical.
My final reason comes straight from my faith and directly addresses Christians in support of this rule.
A common target for Jesus’ scorn was the Pharisees. This sect of people is portrayed throughout the Gospels as those on the side of the law, as opposed to Jesus on the side of love. They were constantly busying themselves with making sure that every Jew followed the law to the letter, lest they invite the wrath of God. Meanwhile, Jesus rebuked them, teaching the Golden Rule and persuading people with parables that illustrated His teachings. He knew that no man could keep every rule perfectly.
Jesus’ example of teaching and reason, I feel, has gone by the wayside with this movement. The Christians behind it have traded the model of Jesus for the model of the Pharisees, choosing law over love. They have come to the conclusion that a law is necessary to change culture, even though this is almost never the case (Prohibition, anyone?). Laws don’t change culture. People change culture. (For a great post on this topic, go here.)
By deciding that a law is necessary to change behavior, these people have decided that the God they so fervently follow is not enough. They have decided that the power they proclaim to so strongly believe in is not quite strong enough. Those so quick to criticize government action in any other arena suddenly think that the government is the only solution on this issue. They apparently reason that God can’t break the hardened heart of all these sinners, so we need make a law instead. “They won’t do what’s right, so we’ll force them!” they say.
I would argue that this movement is fervently misguided. They are promulgating lies that ignore medical practice and science, ignore the study of law, and ignore their supposed beliefs. If we are Christians, we should be known by our love, not our law. This movement is emblematic of the state of the church today, and it’s saddening.
Remember what I said about rules and implications earlier? I would encourage everyone to think about the implication of this Rule and how you would apply it in regards to Amendment 26:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your strength and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.”
In class Tuesday we screened bits and pieces of the documentary Visions of Utopia: Experiments in Sustainable Culture. The film discusses the history of intentional communities and gives brief overviews of several types that exist today. The communities we looked at ranged from a school for handicapped children to an full-on commune where everything was held in common.
It was really interesting to see the different ways people go about seeking community, and it was especially nice to see these living styles alive in the United States, where the typical style of living is pretty much the opposite of these examples. The viewing also spawned an interesting class discussion about how we live and why. We had a good range of opinions on what we thought about it, and I’ll try to give mine without rambling, because this topic touches so many aspects of our lives.
One of the groups that seemed to cause the most reaction was the Twin Lakes group. They share everything, including income, and receive the same amount of money from the groups every month to spend on themselves. I wasn’t totally clear on the inner workings of this, but I can definitely see why someone would not want to live that way. I wouldn’t (or, at least, I’m not there yet). The model that was most appealing to me was the co-housing model, where you have your own space but live in a tightly-knit group of buildings, sharing what you can share and having meals together. This is appealing to me, largely because I’ve already lived like this. Granted, it was more impromptu and way less structured, but it was still intentional, and it was one of the best times in my life.
A group of friends had almost rented out every unit in University Apartments on Spring Street. We had one whole side of the complex (save a long-suffering old lady, bless her soul) and a few on the other side. Looking back, one of the most important design aspects of the apartment that encouraged community was the shared balcony. There was no way you could walk outside without running into someone. Several of the guys later moved into Glen Hollow, which is more townhome-style, and the porch was the one thing they missed the most. It made us hang out and talk to each other. I have reservations about how much design can actually do to create community, but I have no doubts about its ability to create spaces in which community is likely to happen.
We didn’t share everything, but what could be shared generally was. I had a lot of tools, and they were always being borrowed by someone for something. We shared internet connections, guitars, food. One of the most important was the sharing of knowledge. One guy sucked with computers, so he knew to come get me to help him. I didn’t know anything about screenprinting, but one of the guys was into it and showed me how. We improved each others lives and broadened each others’ worldviews by living the way we did.
That experience taught me this: no matter what sort of conflict arose, it could be dealt with, and the resolution was always quicker and better for both parties. I see it now, with the same group of friends, how conflict or issues go way longer before being dealt with, or are only partially resolved. It is absolutely the result of being apart, of only having the shallow community of phone calls and emails. When you’re living in community you don’t have the chance to filter yourself, to only allow in the open what you want people to see or to avoid the deeper issue. The richness of the friendships we created in that arrangement trumped any problems we may have had with each other. That richness is the greater gain, always. Though it never did with us, there can definitely be situations where two people just cannot get along. But that doesn’t mean the idea of living in community is flawed; it means those two people are.
We are social creatures. We’re wired to have tribes, wired to live in groups. And in groups there is always conflict. People are flawed. We break everything we touch. This will never end - no group will one day hit perfection and live in total harmony. That’s a ridiculous standard. So to use potential conflict as a reason to avoid community is a weak argument from the get-go.
But that’s what we do. We have structured our whole society around separating ourselves from other people. We think we have community, through school or church or whatever, but really we only socialize when we feel like it. We only expose ourselves through a filter of our own choosing, trying to control what other people see. And the impacts of this are far-reaching. We have a total inability to get anything done as a society because we insulate ourselves from ideas that contradict what we think, and we refuse to understand the other side of the argument. Instead of resolving our conflict, we retreat back to our rooms and read books and blogs that tell us all the reasons why that other person is wrong. We’ve come to the point where we’re just yelling past each other while society burns to the ground. And I think our lack of living in true community is a direct result of that.
Some questioned the exclusivity of these groups, wondering whether they were really any different from the exclusivity of the typical suburban family. I would say absolutely not. It’s night and day. The difference? Sure, that community in and of itself may be somewhat exclusive, but everyone living in there knows what it’s like to live with others. They know from their experience that people are people, and they will have a greater empathy for others. They have dealt with complex conflicts and wounded relationships. They take that experience with them wherever they go, and it changes how they see the world.
There are so many other aspects of this worth addressing, but this is pretty long as it is. If you read all this, thanks. It’s therapeutic for me to write this out, because I’m basically talking to myself. I know I don’t live like this now, but having the experience I had makes me know what I want to strive for in the future. Now to sleep. I’ll write more about this later.
After going through the inventory & analysis process, the next step is to investigate how the site should be laid out. Functional diagrams are quick sketches of how to do this. For this stage in process, we made two diagrams of our sites. I sketched these out initially and then finished them in Illustrator.
When looking at the site, the main circulation corridors for the site are apparent. Both of the diagrams connect to the existing roadways in Parkside Apartments and tie into the existing street grid at Jackson Street to the east and Curry Street to the south. The main entrance on Jackson Street is flanked by commercial properties that address the main street. Parking for these properties lies in the back and ties into the main circulation routes. The base of the saddle functions as the main node for the site, surrounded by mixed use. At the Curry Street entrance, multi-family housing lines the entrance road, followed by single-family housing closer to the node. Single and multi-family line the street heading west. A buffer protects the drainageway, and a greenway connecting the site to the nearby schools runs through the site along the buffer and over to Moncreif Park. A cohousing development accessed from the maintenance yard driveway is connected to the rest of the development by the greenway. The large swale running between the two made it necessary to do this.
For an alternate diagram, a community house was placed in the center of the node, with a roundabout surrounding it. The circulation routes essentially stay the same, as well as the commercial properties on Jackson Street. The community house is surrounded by mixed-use buildings on three sides, with a view out to the buffer flanked by multi-family housing. This plan has a gradient of density emanating from the node outward, with single-family housing along the edges. The greenway and buffer stay the same, and the cohousing development is replaced by an orchard/forest garden. The decision to do this was based on questions of access from the maintenance yard driveway. It would also be possible to have a cohousing development inside of a forest garden if the access is question is available.
