1. Design as a response to disaster. Between the tsunami and Katrina - and the earthquake in Pakistan - a near-global interest in prefabricated structures, sustainable design, and pre-emptive architectural engineering was born. From levees to portable shelters, coastal marshes to floating cities , flood walls to civic infrastructure , 2005 was the year design became a practical response to natural disaster .
2. Architecture blogs. Architecture blogs have exploded in both popularity and usefulness. Pruned , Inhabitat , A Daily Dose of Architecture , even Archinect - 2005 was the year blogs replaced professors as an indispensable source for architectural thought, news, and speculation.
3. Dubai . Archigram's instant city found its newest archetype in Dubai . Dongtan, Shanghai, New Songdo City, outer Moscow - Dubai shames them all . But is Dubai the city of the future ? I would guess not; for now, though, it has everyone talking (and playing tennis in high places).
4. Google Earth. Do-it-yourself cartography was everywhere by the end of 2005. Forget MapQuest: Google Earth , TerraServer , Pointingit , Frappr - everyone now maps , and location - even psychogeography - will change forever because of it.
5. The High Line. Two guys with a random idea and some letter-writing skills turn a derelict Manhattan rail viaduct into an avant-garde public park. Something in your city that you want to see change? The saga of the High Line is worth close examination.
6. Smithson's Island. In 2005, a new island temporarily joined archipelago New York. It was Robert Smithson's terrestrial performance art piece , a landmass ritually towed round Manhattan. What's next? A new continent, sailed round the world - captained by the editors of Archinect.
7. Hotel Puerta América. If the world's top starchitects can set aside their differences and design a hotel together , then perhaps diplomacy works after all. With Madrid's Hotel Puerta América, an exciting era of collaborative architectural ambition may have quietly begun.
8. Norman Foster hits New York. Finally, New York City recognizes the existence of Norman Foster - from the Hearst Tower to Governors Island and, now, WTC Tower 2: the good Lord makes his presence felt in Empire City. I, for one, hope his visit is a long one.
9. Revenge of the high-rise . J.G. Ballard's High-Rise was finally republished last year in the UK, a book rich in architectural theory: "With its forty floors and thousand apartments, its supermarket and swimming-pools, banks and junior school - all in effect abandoned in the sky - the high-rise offered more than enough opportunities for violence and confrontation." Coincidence? When the cars of France began to burn , some blamed Le Corbusier's towers . Corbu's "high-rise apartments mixed badly with something poor communities generate in profusion: groups of young, armed, desperate males. Anyone who could control the elevator bank (and, when that became too terrifying to use, the graffiti-covered stairwells) could hold hundreds of families ransom." Architectural determinism is back - and it's a riot .
10. Bartenbach Lichtlabor. An Austrian mountain village is nearly suicidal from lack of sun. So what do you do but construct a complex system of mirrors to replace that solar referent and light-up the town throughout the year? 2005: the year Man domesticated Apollo - using architectural technology.
11 Comments
Well this is only Monday and my week is going to be more heinously busy than I want to contemplate. So while I may not have time to follow up on all your "Best ofs" today, I can definitely say that one of the highlights of 2005 for me was adding BLDGBLOG to my favorites and subsequently becoming utterly addicted to it.
Thanks for your time and always-brilliant commentary, Geoff.
There is a beta version of google earth like database by microsoft.
anyone know it.
i believe it was referenced in Archinect a few weeks ago.
(terrible name)
Hey Liberty Bell, glad you like BLDGBLOG. Don't know about brilliant... but I'll just keep drinking coffee.
And I'll check out Windows Live Local too. Thanks!
Thanks for the shout-out Geoff! We love Archinect and we love BLDGblog even more. You're the best.
No problem, but check out these photos meanwhile, you'll all go insane: Terminal Lake.
I think 2006 is the year my hydrological love-affair reaches truly absurd proportions...
I love your hydrological love-affair and it's proportions. go go go!
try this on for size...
fortess great lakes (pdf)
this is beyond love I hope.
John, I went ahead and posted that as a news item, complete with full text here:
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=31947_0_24_0_C
Thanks! Interesting stuff.
Now we just need to design retaining walls, alarmed levees, and machine gun nests around the Lake's perimeter... Have you read Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner? Highly highly highly recommended. Very very very much so. Awesome book. Check out NAWAPA if you get the chance, the North American Water and Power Alliance – it's goal is basically to dam every river in Canada and send all that water to California and Nevada. Totally insane, but so ridiculously ambitious it's almost attractive. I think even the Yukon would be diverted to LA. It's nuts!
Why not have a river flowing across the Pacific Ocean in a floating pontoon frame, bringing fresh water from Siberia to San Francisco...?
And speaking of hydrology, check out these amazing images. Click on them to enlarge, they're crazy.
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