Art

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A Subway Map of French Wines

c. Dr. David Gissen

A clever idea.  I think that the use of maps to depict the spatial relationships by which we organize complex, non-spatial concepts is still vastly under-explored.  This is especially true in light of the tedious nature of linear narratives that seek to explain complex relationships among multiple subjects.  A lot of legal concepts, for example, could probably be better explained with maps than by treatises, but the tyranny of the printing press goes on.

This map, showing French wine regions and their signature grape varietals as stops along a series of fictitious subway routes, bridges an attempt to map what are primarily nominal relationships with the more traditional subject matter of cartography.  Typically, the sample JPEG from the publisher is very reduced: You would have to purchase the full-sized print to enjoy most of its details.

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The White City of Tel Aviv

Bauhaus architecture, Tel Aviv.

The world’s largest collection of Bauhaus architecture makes up the White City of Tel Aviv.  Planning students will remember that Sir Patrick Geddes, the eccentric godfather of 20th century regional planning, was retained by a forerunner to the Jewish Agency to plan the new city’s physical layout during its first period of rapid growth, in the mid-1920s.  Between that time and Israeli independence in 1948, Bauhaus became the architectural style that filled out much of Geddes’s plan.  Recently, I came across an Israeli website, Artlog, that catalogs some of the city’s most significant structures with photographs, architectural drawings, and descriptions.  There really is a striking aesthetic to the clean geometry and smooth curves of these buildings, set against the bright skies and sun-starched land of the Middle East.  Artlog seems to be a work in progress, but its work on Tel Aviv is already quite thorough, and worth a look.

Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean. The ancient seaport of Jaffa is on the horizon.

I found versions of both these photos on multiple websites, without apparent attributions or copyrights.  But if they’re really yours, just let me know, and I’ll either provide appropriate credit, or take them down.

Meanwhile, here’s a schematic map, reproduced in Dwelling on the Dunes: Tel Aviv, by the architect Nitza Metzger-Szmuk (2004), from the cover of Geddes’s 1925 report; and a Google satellite pinpoint map, for comparison:

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New Star Chart

Not exactly land use law (in any earthly sense), but I really like this.

Part of “Compass to the Northern Sky,” Municipal Prints Co.

And stargazing isn’t completely unrelated to the art of town planning: Vitruvius advocated reference to celestial bodies when orienting the layout of new Roman towns.

Posted in Art
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Spotlight: ‘New York by Gehry’

Eight Spruce Street, NYC.

Frank Gehry has designed a significant new building at Eight Spruce Street, New York City.  The sinuous, 76-story tower, featuring curtained walls, bay windows, and a structural frame of reinforced concrete, is now nearing completion.  Situated just between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Beaux-Arts canyons of Wall Street, the development is slated to be mostly rental flats, with a mixed-use element near street level.

Today, I had a chance to see the project up close.  It is quite stunning.  Its scale illustrates the spatial possibilities that are feasible on just a small canvas of urban land.  In an interview last October with the WSJ, Gehry explained how he wanted the building’s design to complement the architecture of the surrounding cityscape.  He has largely succeeded.  One disappointment: in contrast to the silvery, free-flowing form of the tower that comprises most of the structure, the street level floors that reach to the traditional build-to lines are composed of horribly mundane walls made of beige brick.

Here are some snapshots that I took today with a BlackBerry.  The building is essentially done, but work is ongoing.  Next time, I’ll try to get inside.

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NYC Pre-War Apartment Lithos

 

The Alclyde. West 94th/CPW. Source: NYPL

 

This is a great archive from the New York Public Library: floor plans, footprints, drawings, and details of classic New York City apartment buildings, all in original, color lithographs from the turn of the 20th century.  The bulk of the buildings are in Harlem, Washington Heights, and on the Upper West Side, but the collection goes as far downtown as the twenties, and as far up as the Grand Concourse.   Note the parlors and chambers, rather than living rooms and bedrooms, in these units; and the fact that even modest apartments were designed to have living space for domestic help.  I found this cache during research for a paper about efficient land use in Late-Victorian New York City.