Bernard Tscumi's Manhattan Transcripts

Architecture is not simply about space and form, but also about event, action, and what happens in space. He proposed to transcribe an architecture interpretation of reality and its purpose was to transcribe things normally removed from conventional architectural representation, namely the complex relationship between spaces and their use, between the set and script, between “type” and “program, between objects and events.

The dominant theme is a set of disjunctions among use, form and social values; the non-coincidence between meaning and being, movement and space, man and object was the starting condition of the work. His aim was to offer different reading of architecture in which space, movement and events were independent, yet stood in a new relation to one another, so that the conventional components of architecture were broken down and rebuilt along different axes.

When Bad Things Happen

A short [funny] guide to nine big things to worry about—and what you can do about them.

Read more: When Bad Things Happen - What to Do in Case of Disaster http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/14985/

Smallpox Attack
Chlorine Release
Blackout
Dirty Bomb

Earthquake:

What the city would do: Dig survivors out of crumbled tenements and town houses and race to extinguish blazes fueled by broken gas lines. A minimum 5 on the Richter scale would level homes all over the five boroughs, and more deaths would result later as destabilized buildings are toppled by aftershocks and pedestrians are pummeled by falling air conditioners and other debris. Though two major fault patterns run under Manhattan, experts say a big quake is unlikely.
Worst-case scenario: A high-magnitude earthquake with an epicenter within the five boroughs. Aboveground subway lines and bridges crack, and airports are disabled.
What you can do: Live in a steel-framed high-rise built after seismic codes were adopted in 1996. At the first tremor, grab a cell phone and take cover in a doorway or under a solid piece of furniture. Protect your head. If you can, turn off natural gas, water, and electricity, but beware of aftershocks. Cover your nose and mouth with clothing to avoid breathing toxic dust.

Indian Point Explosion
Avian-Flu Pandemic

Hurricane:

What the city would do: Issue evacuation orders 48 hours before the storm hits, urging people in vulnerable zones (see map) to flee those areas by public transportation or catch an MTA bus to Madison Square Garden or one of 22 other intake centers.
Worst-case scenario: A storm closes in on the city faster than expected. Evacuees are stuck in cars on closed roads; the subways and Hudson River tunnels flood. Though a death toll would likely be low, damage could be extensive.
What you can do: Keep three days’ worth of food, water, diapers, medication, and other supplies in a safe place. If you’re in a hurricane zone, buy flood insurance and snap photos of your house for future reference. Keep a prescription stash handy and pack a bag with copies of important documents, extra keys, rain gear and shoes, nonperishable foods, and at least $100.
As the storm approaches, nail plywood over windows and bring balcony furniture and garbage cans inside. If you’re evacuating, unplug appliances, turn off pilot lights and water, and put valuables you can’t take along in watertight containers. Fill your tank, grab a map, and get out of town—with your pets.

Nuclear Bomb:

What the city would do: Pray for help from the Feds because city hospitals, police precincts, and firehouses could be destroyed. If the prospect of a fema-managed catastrophe isn’t scary enough, a nuclear bomb would kill millions, and the lucky ones would get vaporized instantly. Others would be burned, blinded, or poisoned by radiation sickness in subsequent weeks and months. Bodies would litter the streets, and the water supply would be contaminated. The city would be too radioactive for outside emergency workers to enter, so those left alive would have to improvise.
Worst-case scenario: A bomb in the center of midtown. It doesn’t get worse than this.
What you can do: You could try to get your hands on some potassium iodide tablets in case you survive. Or, you might consider investing $200,000 in a “safe room”—a sealed, gamma-radiation-proof space with positive pressure, oxygen, food, necessary medicine, and other supplies—preferably underground. If you’re in a tall building, there’s no harm in heading for the center of the middle floors, which will put more mass between you and the radiation outside. But really: Kiss your ass good-bye.

Garbage of New York City

http://nycgarbage.com/index.html
OMG, would you buy one of these for $50-100?
It started out as an experiment about the power of package design, now Justin has sold more than 1,200 of these spread over 25 countries. Perhaps this is NYC's cure for garbage--repackaging your waste and then selling it back to you...

LOT-EK, YoungWoo Chosen For Lively Pier Renewal Plan:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/new-york-pier-57-by-lot-ek-park-on-shipping-containers.php

Not far from the High Line, another decaying piece of New York infrastructure is bound for a green revival: Pier 57, the decaying concrete hulk on New York's Hudson's River will be transformed into a rooftop park and open-air market sitting above a warren of art studios -- all of it made, appropriately for the port site, out of shipping containers. The board also admired the plan’s financial feasibility: YoungWoo’s proposal cost $191 million, compared to Durst’s $330 million and Related’s $353 million. Cost has been kept low, says LOT-EK, because of its dependence on pre-fab units.

Though the project may not be completed for another two years -- pending approvals and an environmental review -- the disused Pier 57 is due for a makeover. It gained notoriety in 2004 when it served as a detention center for protesters rounded up during the Republican National Convention. Lawsuits later complained of prolonged exposure at the site to motor oil, asbestos, and other contaminants.

How Climate Change Can Alter NY

By Sung Bin Park

The Sea Of People project combines the dynamics of a mass rally with the expressive power of an interactive artistic installation. Following a 12 Noon Rally in Battery Park on Saturday, April 14, 2007, thousands of participants, dressed in blue, will stretch north in two columns along the projected eastern and western 10-foot waterlines that may one day redefine lower Manhattan under the ten-foot sea level rise scenario.

Those living in New York City and its boroughs especially in those many areas only ten feet above sea level could notice changes in the form of more frequent and intense storms, hurricanes, damaging coastal floods and damages to homes and wetlands. Extreme cases of heat waves and droughts, and already rising sea levels are also on the list. With close to 600 miles of coastline, even city homeowners living in “risky” areas most prone to storm damage are getting heated with insurers denying some low lying areas, including greater metropolitan New York, coverage. Beyond the threat to existing infrastructure there are also concerns about public health effects including poor air quality leading to respiratory ailments and asthma, and rising heat temperatures that could potentially be hazardous to the elderly and young children. According to a recent study by the New York Climate and Health Project, if the current climate change trend continues “summer heat-related mortality could increase by 55% by the 2020’s, more than double (129% increase) by the 2050’s”.

The best case scenario is still possible but only with collaboration and collective efforts. Increase in energy produced means increase in burning of fossil fuels. Population increases mean changes in land-use which directly affect the amount of carbon levels. Can the city learn to make the necessary changes to mitigate the problem? Can small changes to our growing and substantial lifestyle have any impact? As New Yorkers, we are already remarkably sustainable, living in a dense, compact and efficient city. We account for a mere 2% of emissions in the U.S. and though the actions we take may not have a big enough impact on global warming, the city is certainly poised to lead the charge and set the standard for others to follow in curtailing carbon emissions. And a slow down of those emissions can play a large role in buying more time, time that is valuable and necessary to find ways to adapt effectively. If New York City can provide the best possible model for carbon efficiency and still maintain a quality of life, it can probably be repeated just about anywhere. Many experts are foreseeing a major damaging hurricane due for New York City. And all inhabitants will have to be prepared for this. The secret to keeping parts of New York from going underwater in the next 50 years is in understanding ways we can lessen our impact, by preparing for the future and getting involved.

According to Columbia University’s Climate Change Information Resources website: www.ccir.ciesin.columbia.edu/nyc, a helpful information hub: “Individual actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can help to slow climate change. Many actions have synergistic, or "win-win" effects.” While skeptics may believe it is futile to try to lessen our carbon emissions impact, the choices we make and actions we take in a city of 8 million can certainly have a ripple effect.

New York Resources, CAD + 3D + Maps

http://www.vterrain.org/Locations/us/ny/

Site information on Manhattan, New York City. Includes:
Regional Data
State of New York
Base Maps
Aerial Photos
3D Model
Historical NY
Transportation and Infrastructure
Subway
Bicycle
WTC site

Virtual 3d Model of Manhattan:
http://upnext.com/entry.htm

Manhattan Transformations:
Mapping Manhattan Skyscraper Districts Through Time:

http://www.skyscraper.org/timeformations/intro.html

This project uses computer models and interactive animation to depict the dynamic relationship between Manhattan's skyscrapers and other layers of urban information, such as geologic formation, settlement patterns, landfill, transportation and communication infrastructure, zoning laws and real estate cycles.

Manahatta Project | Manhattan before it was a city:
http://themannahattaproject.org/

What the World would look like during global warming flood | an interactive map:
Using data from NASA, here is a Google map tool that allows you to speculate on possible consequences of global warming and rising sea levels.

Urban Refuse, Housing & Wall.E [a 'carborexic' city]

by Michell Joachim. evolo issue 1. fall 2009 (62-65)

Imagine our colossal municipal landfills as sensible resource sheds to build our future urban and peri-urban spaces. If so, what kind of effort is required to reuse their copious contents as housing and infrastructure? Now that the bulk of humanity has chosen to settle in urbanized areas, waste management needs a radical revision.

For hundreds of years we designed cities to generate waste. It is time we design waste to generate our cities. America is the leading creator of waste on the earth, making approximately 30% of the world's trash and tossing out 0.8 tons per u.s. citizen per year. It seems value has devolved into feats of rampant affluenza and mega products scaled for supersized franchise brands, big box retail, XXXL jumbo paraphernalia, etc., encapsulating a joint race for ubiquity and instantaneity in the U.S. mindset. The first we must take is reduction, meaning a massive discontinuation of objects designed for obsolescence. Then we need a radical reuse plan. What is our call of action?

At the moment, New York City is disposing of 38,000 tons of wste per day. Previously most of this discarded material ended up in Fresh Kills on Staten Island before operations were blocked. Manhattanites toss out enough paper products to fill a volume the size of Empire State Building every two weeks. Our Rapid Re(f)use project strives to capture, reduce, and redesign New York's refuse. The initiative supposes an extended city reconstituted from its own waste materials. our concept remakes the city by utilizing all trash entombed in the Fresh Kills landfills. Theoretically our method should produce, at minimum, seven entirely new Manhattan Islands at full scale. This will provide housing for another 3 million people. Started by Robert Moses.

How does it work? Outsized automated 3D printers are modified to rapidly process trash and complete this housing task within decades. These automatons are wholly based on exisiting techniques commonly found in industrial waste compaction devices. To accomplish this job, we deem nothing drastically new needs to be invented; most technologies are intended to be off-the-shelf. Instead of machines that crust objects into cubes, devices can use adjustable jaws that will craft simple shapes into smart puzzle blocks for assembly. The blocks of refuse are predetermined using computational geometries to puzzle fit domes, archways, lattices, windows, whatever patterns needed.

Different materials serve specific purposes; transparent plastic for fenestration, organic compounds for temporary scaffolds that decompose, metals for primary structures, etc. Eventually the future city makes no distinction between waste and supply.

Idea is not new, Sambo Mockbee is one such example...

Terreform ONE group prepared a presentation that would unpack a view of one version of the future. A world free of carbon loading in the atmosphere and abundant in self sufficient lifestyles and housing. As eco savvy architects, we had meticulously crafted cities within the rubric of a socio-ecological domain. Everyone and everything in these urban ideations were carborexic to the hilt.

We design places for people to fit symbiotically into their natural surrounds. We design the scooters, cars, trains, blimps, as well as the strets, parks, open spaces, cultural districts, civic centres, business hubs, etc. that comprise of a future metropolis. For centuries cities have been designed to accommodate the drama of our human will. We have joined the ranks of delivering a new sense of the city, one that privileges the drama of nature over anthropocentric whims.

How much new technology needs to be obtained to do so, or should we modify existing methods? If it is plausible to adapt the current machinery, how much material is available? At first look--any westernized sanitary landfill appears like an ample supply of building "nutrients". The heavy industrial technologies to compact cars into lumber or automatically sift/trommel through garbage are readily available. Other technologies are scalable to make the system articulate specific forms. 3D printing, an exhausted hackneyed capability, is mutable for grander tasks.

Our city will be delivered from trash, but not ordinary trash, smart trash. We were inspired by Woody Allen. The integration of devices into the everyday city is an essential piece in a familiar puzzle. He used to tell a great parable about mechanical objects with attitude.

A significant factor in our city composed from smart refuse is post-tuning. unitized devices will not immediately adapt. integration into the city texture is a learning process. After a time the responses will become more attenuated to the needs of the urban dweller. This city is made from trash, but each individual component is enhanced with a modicum of CPU power. Many short durational events will gives these smart units experiences needed to evolve.

Our final objective for this city is to establish a self-sufficient perpetual motion urbanism. Perpetual motion is said not to exist, yet. It defies the laws of thermodynamics and energy conservation. It claims that an apparatus can be created that produces more energy than it consumes. What if our city was like an instrument that produces more energy from renewable sources than it consumes? Or instead of a city like a single instrument, it is a city of a trillion instruments making more with less. In this case, nothing can be thrown away. Every bit is a vital piece of stored energy poised to be reused in a cyclical nutrient stream. It is a city without a tail pipe. It is a city that not only has zero impact, but it is a positive contribution towards the natural surrounds. It is the highest standard we can conceive. JFK said "if man created problems, man can solve them." We think it is not only about solving our ecological issues but returning to a system of perpetuity. This is the future for a truly breathing interconnected metabolic urbanism.

Urban housing has passed the age of industrialization and entered the age of recovery. After this great cleansing of orders; positive waste. Here is an order that captures our socio-ecological needs. not utopia, but a philtopia, a place where everything is precious and nothing is disposed.

Dragonfly, A Metabolic Farm for Urban Agriculture

http://www.tuvie.com/dragonfly-a-metabolic-farm-for-new-york-city-in-the-future/

by Vincent Callebaut
http://vincent.callebaut.org/

Dragonfly vertical farm is a concept urban farm specially designed for the Roosevelt Island of New York City which will reduce the problems associated with food shortage, mileage and connection between the producers and consumers. Because of the densely packed city civilization, this farm has been designed vertically, spanning 132 floors and 28 different agricultural fields for accommodating dragonflies aiming to produce fruit, grains, vegetables, meat and dairy. This Dragonfly wing shaped superstructure features wind and solar power producing capability and includes housing, offices, research labs and communal areas separated from farms, orchards and production rooms. Throughout the glass and steel set of wings, animal and plant farming is arranged as well as soil nutrient levels are maintained properly.



These very light wings in glass and steel retake the loads of the building and are directly inspired from the structure of the dragonfly wings coming from the family of “Odonata Anisoptera” whose transparent membrane is very finely nervured. Two inhabited rings buttress around these wings. Their organically chiselled exo-structure accommodates the inter-climatic spaces that receive the agrarian cultures. They buttress.

The whole set forms «double layer» architecture in bee nest mesh that exploits the solar passive energy at its maximum level, by accumulating the warm air in the winter in the thickness of the exo-structure, and by cooling the atmosphere by natural ventilation and by evapo-perpiration of the plants in the summer. Protecting thus the cultures from climatic changes in New York (from -25.5°C in the winter to +41°C in the summer), these plug spaces are useful to reflect on the agriculture not anymore in terms of surface area but really in terms of volume.