Victorian Nonsense

Figure 1, circa 1920.

This spectacular photograph shows what looks to be a rural farm home quietly roaming across the prairie. The scene is incredibly tense as a single, lonely tree stands in the background on the left, flanked by two additional (mobile?) homes on the right. A smoky fog adds to the mystique of the photo. In another lifetime, historians may come across this image and proclaim suburban sprawl occurred in this manner: entire homes drifting quietly and blindly through a dusty, undeveloped, (perhaps even war torn) landscape...

For more historic photos and the image featured above, visit: Square America Snapshot Archive Blog

Power Rankings

The Mockitecture WebLog team loves partaking in trendy things, and since the trend among our fellow colleague-bloggers seems to be linking to articles worth reading, here's our contribution. This is the first of what I hope to be a weekly installment of commentry that catches our eye here at the Mockitecture WebLog.

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10.) The Sesquipedalist is desperately contemplating the act of tweeting. Why do we do it? Highlights from the Sesquipedalist's rant (I'm using "rant" in an approving manner):

• “Perhaps it's the interminable loneliness of the long-distance PhD-er who cries out into the wilderness ‘is anybody out there?’ only to receive the reply of ‘Eating a battenburg slice, listening to Fat Freddie's Drop’.”
• “Twitter has attracted an architectural contingent of which, I think, I am on the margins. I tend to follow this architectural Twitterati (neither of my real friends who I really meet have a Twitter account) as it weaves its eclectic narrative, casting judgment and consensualising taste. The people I follow are mainly linked to this group, forming a new high-tech version of a closed circle.”
• “The amazing thing is how often people update. Don't they have real things to do? Don't I? Yes. But I don't smoke, so can consider this my fag break without having to go outside. Maybe every loo will soon be fitted with a Twitter interface to guarantee being regular.”
• “This twitter character I've constructed is stranger than the blog one and not very like the real me. If people met me in vivo, I'm sure they'd wonder where the in silico version went because in reality I'm quite a shy, quiet person lacking in confidence, whereas in twitter format, it's only possible for me to be a man of words whose 140 characters are the same height as everyone else's.”

9.) The Canadian Centre for Architecture’s new website taught us you can enjoy motion sickness from the comfort of your own home. Here's how: go to their website, maximize your internet browser window, sit really close to your monitor.

8.) Clayton Miller shows us the future (in 8.5 minutes).

7.) Life Without Buildings would like you to rage against the machine with this rousing discussion about the Situationists & Guy Debord. Venturi would be proud of Lw/oB for this rather innovative method for documenting architecture in the modern age.

6.) Fantastic Journal promises to tell us in the eWorld why suburbia isn’t funny anymore – a topic that the Mockitecture WebLog team is already enthusiastically denying. Sir Charles also includes some kind words for this WebLog in his “last post for awhile” post.

5.) VisuaLignual shows what happens when artists and architects collaborate together: "...illustrations that situated Ford cars against fantastic backdrops, combining gorgeous natural scenery with outlandish architecture."

4.) Eikonographia has a rather enjoyable musing on the implications of designing a W-shaped building, as BIG has done in Prague: “The case of the ‘W’ building designed by BIG is however more complicated. We might not know the word the ‘W’ refers to, but we do know it’s a ‘W’. That is something. This building is a ‘W’. There are few letters in the alphabet as cool as a ‘W’. It is not at all like soft ‘J’ or a hard ‘K’. A ‘W’ is far more relaxed. Double-U. Its symmetrical figure is thorough and strong. It is nothing, but something.”

3.) Pruned speculates over the possibility of an Urban Winter Olympics for all of those Chicagoans still depressed about their recent losing bid on the summer games. Man-made mountains and the conversion of Soldier Field for ski jumping? What more could you ask for!?

2.) The Infrastructurist shares thoughts on some of the "world's ugliest buildings" as determined by Travel + Leisure. Upon closer inspection, the list appears to be nothing more than another jab at overly hated post modern architecture. Not to worry, as Mockitecture is planning a reactionary post to this topic as well.

1.) Strange Harvest discovers London's "Best New Building": “An assemblage of totally ordinary elements (billboard, hoarding, fencing) and totally ordinary programmes (newsagent, advertising site, mini cab office). But the relationship between these elements makes it something amazing. [...] One part becomes the structural support for another, something else becomes a revenue stream generated from a perimeter enclosure. Together, they develop highly pragmatic response to a left over piece of urbanism, maximising the potentials of use.”
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News Flash: America invades Venice...and fails!

One day I hope to create something as brilliant as Mike Bouchet has done at the 2009 Venice Biennale. If you haven't heard of his Watershed project yet - check out the brief description over at BLDGBLOG and YouTube: IT WILL BE WELL WORTH YOUR TIME!!!

Bouchet's take on American suburbia makes me proud to have grown up living the American dream (in suburbia). I've crossed out Susan Boyle and penciled in Bouchet to top my recently created list of Heroes/People I Want To Have Lunch With.

I Love Mike Bouchet.

News Flash: Cartoonist Claims Suburbia Will Die!

Consider this a plug to all of our local fans and readers (I apologize to the rest of the eWorld)...Warning to those unfamiliar with the city of Cincinnati, Ohio: many references to local politics, locations, and landmarks. Reading between the lines will certainly reveal the crossroads American urbanism faces today...

My good friend Jim (Borgman) enjoys drawing cartoons. In fact, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer. His work can be found newspapers throughout the country and is even displayed in the White House. In the excerpt below (2002), he paints a very radical image of a Midwestern American city rebounding from it's more prosperous years of industrial growth. Watch out European cities...here we come:

"Suddenly everyone began streaming into the center city. Urban planners described it as the “donut-hole phenomenon”. The hotels filled to capacity as thousands of outsiders parked their SUVs and rode the Metro into the vibrancy of the urban maelstrom. “There was nothing left on the outer rings but stale crumbs,” explained a Downtown consultant."

Overnight, the inner city experienced a renaissance of retail, recreation and residency. Soon the lights were blinking out in shopping malls all around the beltway.

Strong-Mayor-For-Life Charlie Luken spent three days a week cutting ribbons at newly constructed high-rise homesteads, for which developers paid the city he fees for building rights. During much of the rest of the week, the mayor could be found on the Jack Nicklaus-designed Riverside Links – 18 holes of verdant perfection that hooked and sliced around the homes and businesses of the Banks.

Casino boats from Indiana steamed upriver, attempting to lure passengers on board at Cincinnati’s Public Landing with offers of free rides and chips. There were few takers. “Why bet on a long shot in Lawrenceburg when you’ve got a sure thing in Downtown Cincinnati?” asked one satisfied resident as she walked her Lhassa apso across the newly restored doggie green in Lytle Park.

Once the ordinance passed that prohibited automobiles from coming any closer in than the I-275 beltway, the skies cleared over the center city and D.C. (Downtown Cincinnati) became an international destination for health enthusiasts. “I come to bathe in the balm of the Ohio,” said a tourist from Tokyo, as he stood beneath the outstretched arms of the Genius of the Waters. The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Beach Patrol had to put on extra deputies during the warm weekends of summer when pilgrims seeking the rivers city’s reputed healing affects would line up for immersions along the Serpentine Wall.

Eventually the fortunate residents of Downtown began to complain at the injustice of having to pay subsidies to support the far-flung, fading suburbs. “I’m afraid to drive out there at night,” was one common complaint. “It’s eerily quiet and there are no lights to guide you but the stars and fireflies.” Others complained that the cost of maintaining miles of highways to far off points like Montgomery, Mason and Greater Deerfield Township, should be born by those who chose to live so far away from the comforting cluster of downtown humanity.

The City’s Motto: 'Why leave Downtown? Everything you could ever want is right here!' "