Allright kids, it's very likely that I'll be moving to New Harmony, Indiana, for the summer. The goal is to look at the social struture, who is in charge of the government, who are the powerful families, geneology, who sits on what board, what are the influential individuals and who isn't.
This semester I tracked down all the property owners, who lives in each property, who pays rent to whom, all the phone numbers, where all the businesses are, all the not for profit organizatgions, churches and members (hopefully I'll get that pinned down during the summer) and now I'm combining it with who are all the people in the cemetery, who lives in which cemetery lot owned by whom, and well, it will all get combined into one big massive drawing.
Amazingly enough, there are people that live that own property in the cemetery, and people that are dead that own property in the town.
In essence, we have the land of the living, the land of the dead, and everything in between.
This has been my studio project for the semester, and I'm happy to say it's getting extended into the summer.
By the way, I'm using Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Rhetoric as a means towards how civic duty social responsibility.
Don't worry, I have Philosophy and Sociology faculty helping me all the way.
It's that one project that has everything in it and allows me to be irresponsible enough to be able to pull it off. To set up a new utopia which will ultimately fail yet is a hell-of-a-fun to try anyways....
So that's it, that's what I'm working on these days.... You are welcom to say whatever you want, I'd love to hear for commets, but be warned that I'm having the time of my life....
sounds really interesting... I'm always looking up property information but never thought about doing something so in-depth and metaphysical. the part about the living and the dead, beautiful. how's that for being confronted with mortality. now if you could just package it in a way that will interest non-architects I can show it to my dad... and how does this relate to a new utopia??
huh, interesting. how did you choose new harmony, indiana? i mention this because my friend restores cemeteries (she's an archaeologist); she once worked on recording information on a cemetery that had been victim to a flood, which caused everything to...shift. i'm surprised that you've been able to trace people in the cemetery to the land they own in the town (how big is it?). do you have any preliminary conclusions you feel like sharing?
New Harmony was set up as a religious community under George Rapp in the early 1800's. Essentially the german immigrants were waiting for the second coming of Christ. Things got tough, people gave up, and the town was purchased by Robert Owen ten years later in the 1820's. Again, under Robert Owen the town became a social experiment and it wasn't long until the dreams of utopia fell appart. Until this day, the town has never really grown over 1000 citizens. The town was chosen by my studio prof. and I won't provide his name, but I have to admit I've never had this much fun in any project before.
The question of the living and the dead, its amazing that 200 years later, we have a balance of about 1000 people in the town, and about 1000 people buried in the cemetery. By the way, the town is landlocked by the influential families in that they own all property surrounding the town limits. This is middle america in its majesty...
During the semester I focused on land ownership and individuals in town boards, churches, families, government, and non-profit organizations. As towards any conclusions, this is a tough one since it's easy to blame land owners and heaviliy influential members, yet the same families to this day remain heavily involved in philantrophical pursuits. This is the kind of place where you know exactly what's going on yet you don't know where you fit in...
questions of good government. ie, how do get a town to become consciously aware of their social structure, and recognize their individual responsibility towards civic duty. This is not a question of who's to blame or not, rather than how to get the totality of the town towards similar aims: success of society rather than success of the individual.
How can we have "social pressure towards association" recycled for "social pressure towards responsibility." That is what we're studying. But you can't do that unless you have a knowledge of the present state of things.
If we have a stage where upon a constituency can visualize their social structure, they can now come to terms with the necessity of civic duty and an attempt as to how they can be involved.
something that may be interesting to you in designing the drawing itself. there are some wonderful books out there illustrating maps/drawings that shakers, quakers, amish - maybe even harmonists - drew of their communities.
i had a project based on the shaker way of drawing maps which presented landmark buildings two dimensionally, fronting the most primary street with which they were associated. turn the corner of the street, the two dimensional facades rotate accordingly. but then large open spaces are shown in correct plan.
just studying these drawings in detail gives you a good sense of the communities' ideas of public/private (esp interesting in a somewhat commune-like system), impt/less impt, etc
i'm sure that you already know this, but it is very important to note that Robert Owen was one of the forefathers of socialism... i believe that he was even pre-Marx...
i recently saw a film on PBS called Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism... the film starts with Robert Owen and Utopian Socialism...
arqa, good luck on the drawing, its a great idea, just out of curiousity, have you looked up stan allen's stuff... he has beautiful diagrams which might be of some inspiration to you... though im sure you've looked into him, and the drawing i saw was fantastic.
on a side note... the hub sucks this morning... haha
my firm has a project in New Harmony under construction this spring and summer. email me if you are interested and I might be able to introduce you to some people I know there.
Archinecture, let me remind you that the aim of criticism is for it to be constructive in nature, and to express your frustrations from past experiences could easily be replaced for what in your judgement would provide insight to a project. This way we can all learn something and your opinion can be considered for its merit.
If you would like to try again, please do so.
spark, that would be great, i'll definitely keep you posted as things develop. By the way, what project is that?
architphil, thanks for the link. I stumbled accross it earlier but it made for a great reminder. I'll have to track the film down one of these days.
Apr 21, 06 6:36 am ·
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I've hit the lottery!!!
Allright kids, it's very likely that I'll be moving to New Harmony, Indiana, for the summer. The goal is to look at the social struture, who is in charge of the government, who are the powerful families, geneology, who sits on what board, what are the influential individuals and who isn't.
This semester I tracked down all the property owners, who lives in each property, who pays rent to whom, all the phone numbers, where all the businesses are, all the not for profit organizatgions, churches and members (hopefully I'll get that pinned down during the summer) and now I'm combining it with who are all the people in the cemetery, who lives in which cemetery lot owned by whom, and well, it will all get combined into one big massive drawing.
Amazingly enough, there are people that live that own property in the cemetery, and people that are dead that own property in the town.
In essence, we have the land of the living, the land of the dead, and everything in between.
This has been my studio project for the semester, and I'm happy to say it's getting extended into the summer.
By the way, I'm using Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Rhetoric as a means towards how civic duty social responsibility.
Don't worry, I have Philosophy and Sociology faculty helping me all the way.
It's that one project that has everything in it and allows me to be irresponsible enough to be able to pull it off. To set up a new utopia which will ultimately fail yet is a hell-of-a-fun to try anyways....
So that's it, that's what I'm working on these days.... You are welcom to say whatever you want, I'd love to hear for commets, but be warned that I'm having the time of my life....
by the way, this is all through public records... I'm completely neutral...
sounds really interesting... I'm always looking up property information but never thought about doing something so in-depth and metaphysical. the part about the living and the dead, beautiful. how's that for being confronted with mortality. now if you could just package it in a way that will interest non-architects I can show it to my dad... and how does this relate to a new utopia??
sounds very fun and incredibly interesting...
especially the resultant drawing
good luck, keep us posted with your progress, interesting findings etc.
huh, interesting. how did you choose new harmony, indiana? i mention this because my friend restores cemeteries (she's an archaeologist); she once worked on recording information on a cemetery that had been victim to a flood, which caused everything to...shift. i'm surprised that you've been able to trace people in the cemetery to the land they own in the town (how big is it?). do you have any preliminary conclusions you feel like sharing?
New Harmony was set up as a religious community under George Rapp in the early 1800's. Essentially the german immigrants were waiting for the second coming of Christ. Things got tough, people gave up, and the town was purchased by Robert Owen ten years later in the 1820's. Again, under Robert Owen the town became a social experiment and it wasn't long until the dreams of utopia fell appart. Until this day, the town has never really grown over 1000 citizens. The town was chosen by my studio prof. and I won't provide his name, but I have to admit I've never had this much fun in any project before.
The question of the living and the dead, its amazing that 200 years later, we have a balance of about 1000 people in the town, and about 1000 people buried in the cemetery. By the way, the town is landlocked by the influential families in that they own all property surrounding the town limits. This is middle america in its majesty...
During the semester I focused on land ownership and individuals in town boards, churches, families, government, and non-profit organizations. As towards any conclusions, this is a tough one since it's easy to blame land owners and heaviliy influential members, yet the same families to this day remain heavily involved in philantrophical pursuits. This is the kind of place where you know exactly what's going on yet you don't know where you fit in...
Blame them for what? This sounds intriguing but am I the only one who doesn't see the meat in the middle of the hotpocket?
ie, what exactly are you studying?
I find utopian societies fascinating. Are you studying their interaction with the built environment? Or... dead people? or something?
questions of good government. ie, how do get a town to become consciously aware of their social structure, and recognize their individual responsibility towards civic duty. This is not a question of who's to blame or not, rather than how to get the totality of the town towards similar aims: success of society rather than success of the individual.
How can we have "social pressure towards association" recycled for "social pressure towards responsibility." That is what we're studying. But you can't do that unless you have a knowledge of the present state of things.
If we have a stage where upon a constituency can visualize their social structure, they can now come to terms with the necessity of civic duty and an attempt as to how they can be involved.
i saw your professors presentation on this-very interesting-I look forward to seeing your drawings
this could be a fantastic experience, jsut be careful not to get too brainwashed by ben....
are you gonna transfer to SAIC to be further consumed by the kufi box?
no no no, right now i want to do this project, have another year of undergrad torture, and get the hell out of here...
something that may be interesting to you in designing the drawing itself. there are some wonderful books out there illustrating maps/drawings that shakers, quakers, amish - maybe even harmonists - drew of their communities.
i had a project based on the shaker way of drawing maps which presented landmark buildings two dimensionally, fronting the most primary street with which they were associated. turn the corner of the street, the two dimensional facades rotate accordingly. but then large open spaces are shown in correct plan.
just studying these drawings in detail gives you a good sense of the communities' ideas of public/private (esp interesting in a somewhat commune-like system), impt/less impt, etc
sounds fun, arqa.
arqa,
i'm sure that you already know this, but it is very important to note that Robert Owen was one of the forefathers of socialism... i believe that he was even pre-Marx...
i recently saw a film on PBS called Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism... the film starts with Robert Owen and Utopian Socialism...
Heaven on Earth
arqa, good luck on the drawing, its a great idea, just out of curiousity, have you looked up stan allen's stuff... he has beautiful diagrams which might be of some inspiration to you... though im sure you've looked into him, and the drawing i saw was fantastic.
on a side note... the hub sucks this morning... haha
Boludo, I'll be at crown this weekend to see what madness your into now. As always, very interesting stuff.
this is all a load of garbage. i'm sure your project is nice and all, but good riddance ben, and all of his followers....
arqa,
my firm has a project in New Harmony under construction this spring and summer. email me if you are interested and I might be able to introduce you to some people I know there.
I am curious about the project.
Archinecture, let me remind you that the aim of criticism is for it to be constructive in nature, and to express your frustrations from past experiences could easily be replaced for what in your judgement would provide insight to a project. This way we can all learn something and your opinion can be considered for its merit.
If you would like to try again, please do so.
spark, that would be great, i'll definitely keep you posted as things develop. By the way, what project is that?
architphil, thanks for the link. I stumbled accross it earlier but it made for a great reminder. I'll have to track the film down one of these days.
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