Publications « Rogue HAA

Category: Publications

ROGUEHAA PUBLISHED IN MONU #15 – “CHOOSE YOUR OWN URBANISM”

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

This new MONU issue on the topic of Post-Ideological Urbanism probably touches on one of the most fascinating and biggest issues of our time and in our culture, or what is left of it: the non-ideological – or better post-ideological – conditions of our society when it comes to cities. Today, ideology ap…pears to have become, and to have been reduced to, something merely aesthetic, something you can buy yourself into as Wouter Vanstiphout explains in an interview with us entitled “Acrobatic Narratives”. In that sense cities have become suspicious territories where hypocrisy and fakery prevail when it comes to urban ideologies…and a new sincerity is obviously needed in a world consisting of a multiplicity of choices and urban outcomes without a single consistent urban ideology as Melissa Dittmer, Jamie Witherspoon, and Noah Resnick point out in their piece “Choose Your Own Urbanism Presents: The Case of the Missing Ideal”.

The following text is an excerpt from an article entitled “CHOOSE YOUR OWN URBANISM PRESENTS: The Case of the Missing Ideal” that has been recently published in the latest MONU magazine:

It’s a hot, dry and dusty afternoon… But, then again, all the afternoons are hot, dry and dusty in Sin City. You’re in your shoebox of an office with the top three buttons of your white cotton shirt undone, a damp towel on the back of your neck, and the sound of a rickety two-dollar fan blowing in your face. The A.C. is on the fritz again, and you’re just about to phone up that good-for-nothing building super to complain, when you hear three soft taps on the glass pane of your office door – the one that reads: Calvin Lynch, Private Detective.

You ask her to have a seat in the worn leather armchair and offer her a cigarette and a glass of flat ginger ale. She accepts neither and says she prefers to stand.

“I’m searching for something,” she finally says, after standing in front of the window, staring out through the half-closed blinds. “They say what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but this thing didn’t stay. Or, maybe it never existed to begin with. Either way, I need your help.”

(more…)

Tags: Architecture, Choose your own urbanism, las vegas, MONU magazine, Urban Design, urbanism
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ARCHITECT AS IMPOSTER

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Las Vegas – The Double Agent. Las Vegas has always been a city of conflicted identities. The Strip, faux-velvet pastiche was built on the dreams of images and illusion. The Desert, the extreme of a ‘natural’, harsh, untouched world exists as both silent background but also as an essential part of the Vegas experience – two conflicting constructed realities simultaneously superimposed on one another. Both identities of Las Vegas exist as totalizing worlds, literally and conceptually distinct from one another, yet occupying the same physical space. A bi-polar existence blatantly marketed to the world.

False Documents. Architects increasingly use the perspectival rendering as a way to convey experiential narrative and to portray a space ‘as it will be.’ These images are never about reality, but when used as tools to convey a certain idealized vision, they create a portal into a counterfeit world. In every design proposal, there are certain embedded cultural practices, biases, and stereotypes which inevitably influence how future inhabitants will understand and occupy these spaces. And regardless of the intentions, hyper-“realism” renderings dictate future interactions between people and their internal and external environments. (more…)

Tags: architectural renderings, las vegas, Research
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MILANO<>DETROIT : DENSE<>RARIFIED

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

“Two cities and two themes: voids and density. In one city, voids have been expressly created, in the other, the voids are the result of decline. In one, voids are defined by the surrounding density, in the other, the empty spaces neither define nor are defined. Milan and Detroit have very little in common. Indeed they seem opposites, like positive and negative images of the same picture.” -Maurizio Sabini

In the latest edition of the Italian design journal, THE PLAN, two editors compile an assortment of city specific urban design articles. Milan’s essays illustrate the extreme densification of their Italian city and the deliberate insertion of strategically programmed voids. While the Detroit contributors expand upon the current dynamic state of this city, urban creativity resulting from the many voids of Detroit, and the need to redefine the previously negative connotations of Detroit as void.

Hamilton Anderson expands upon Detroit’s descriptive relativism. As stated in their article, “MULTIPLICITY AS RESOURCE: A Combined Architectural Narrative”, Detroit provides a unique opportunity to study how the urban architect may engage the vast plurality of perceptions and beliefs that define a city, and how they can inform the future trajectory of its built environment. As the infamous case study of our current international economic and social condition, it is fashionable to expound on what should be done with, what will become of, what happened to, Detroit. As an object, Detroit is a land of multiple narratives, and in the vein of descriptive pluralism, all of these narratives are true. (more…)

Posted in Detroit Urban Strategy, Publications, Research, Urbanism | Comments Off

EVALUATION CITY : Post Industrial’s Most Valuable Urbanism

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

The following text is an excerpt from an article entitled “EVALUATION CITY: Post Industrial’s Most Valuable Urbanism” that has been recently published in the latest MONU magazine.

To aid in the surplus of stressful societal situations that face the modern female, the 21st century woman can rely on a handful of helpful journals such as “Cosmopolitan” and “Glamour” to evaluate any relationship or affirm all major life decisions. These lifestylist magazines will argue that there is no unique set of conditions, no singular relationship, and no unusual characteristics that can’t be quantified. In support of these sweeping generalizations, many of the articles summarize their theories by incorporating a simplified quiz, a minimal test that helps the reader judge themselves, another human being, and the future success of their relationship. Within a few short minutes, the contemporary lady can create her own personal compass to help guide her through modern relationships: whether that relationship is with her current spouse, potential boyfriend, frustrating boss, or annoying mother-in-law.

“How compatible are you and your spouse in bed?”
“Is he going to marry you?“
“Should you leave your job?“

Ironically, these outrageously simple evaluation techniques are also commonly used to stereotype other modern conditions. As seen in a plethora of media outlets, the “most livable city” is a ranking system usually completed by an accounting or financial firm that evaluates international cities against a series of pre-set criteria. Each city is judged using their past year’s statistics, appraised, and then ranked against one another. Depending upon the media’s audience, intentions, and desired outcomes, these standards vary slightly, factoring unique priorities into an otherwise biased economically-based set of standards. In one example, Forbes combined income, crime statistics, unemployment, housing markets, and college graduate statistics with amicable weather AND professional sports team winnings to result in their list of “Top 10 Best Places to Live in the US.” Simultaneously, Forbes also published the “Top 10 Worst Places to Live in the US” using the same questionable data combinations. (more…)

Posted in Detroit Urban Strategy, Publications, Research | Comments Off

DESIGNED THEATRICALITY

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Designed Theatricality. Jane Jacobs called everyday city animation the “ballet of sidewalk life”, strangers dancing in synchronicity. In Detroit’s Lafayette Park, the residents are not strangers. Rather, each day the residents perform a synchronized animation, live performances through the lens of modern architecture. For, to live in Lafayette Park is to live in a constant state of theatricality, the pre-designed and very deliberate exhibition of both resident and visitor. The masterplan, architecture, and landscaping strategically combine to create a multitude of voyeuristic portals, viewing frames that project the lives of every resident to one another. Designed within a multiplicity of physical and temporal scales, these portals produce meaningful relationships between the residents and their community, resulting in the fundamental success of LaFayette Park. (more…)

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HIP HOP ARCHITECTURE

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

“Negro music has touched America because it is the melody of the soul joined with the rhythm of the machine. It is in two part time; tears in the heart; movement of the legs, torso arms and head. The music of the era of construction; innovating. It floods the body and heart; it floods the USA and its floods the world. The jazz is more advanced than the architecture. If architecture were at the point reached by jazz, it would be an incredible spectacle.” – Le Corbusier

As a catalyst, the above quote ignited years of research, eventually leading to the development of my University of Detroit Mercy Graduate Thesis, “Hip Hop Inspired Architecture.” In short, the thesis established a framework for analyzing the developments of multiple cultural architectural styles and then assimilating these precedents within the proposed creation of a Hip Hop inspired architecture. By first understanding the evolution of each cultural architecture separately, one perceives how Le Corbusier’s musings on music and architecture suggest an evolution from jazz towards a Hip Hop Culture. While Le Corbusier should not be credited with laying the foundation of the Hip-Hop culture, his physical and theoretical works indirectly contributed both positively and negatively to the Hip Hop culture. Within this body of research, I further explored the cultural and professional significance in implementing the Hip-Hop culture into the field of architecture. Johann von Goethe said, “I call architecture frozen music.” My thesis sought to freeze the most socially and culturally recognizable music in the world, Hip Hop. (more…)

Tags: Detroit Urban Strategies
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LANSING RIVERFRONT

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

QUESTIONS. We began with questions that were simple, physical, and topographic. How do we get down to the River? Can we redefine the City’s relationship with its River? Could water be here, between our toes, as well as headed toward our taps? Can we create joy and utility in the same place?

PROJECT. The project’s landscape, where the Grand River meets downtown Lansing, has been most valued in the City’s history by reserving it for industrial uses. The River has been held away by walls, taken in, distributed, harnessed for power, and measured when necessary to keep us dry.

In a shift of collective thinking mirroring a global trend, Lansing has reevaluated its River-City interface, now reserving it for immediate and intimate public use. As part of that reassessment of values, the City has charged HAA’s team with the task of creating a new public riverfront along both sides of the Grand River between the Shiawassee Street Bridge and Ottawa Street. To the west, the project meets the Accident Fund’s new corporate headquarters. To the east, it interacts with the relocation of Lansing’s City Market. On both sides, it connects to Lansing’s River Trail. (more…)

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DETROIT WILDLIFE REFUGE PROJECT PUBLISHED IN TOPOS

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

PROJECT. The Detroit Wildlife Refuge project has been published in the April edition of TOPOS magazine.

CONCEPT. Landscape Urbanism advocates a purposeful discourse between ecological systems, human activities, and the post-industrial landscape, ultimately manifesting in the deliberate celebration of the urban void. This celebration glorifies the interstitial, so that the void is inevitably romanticized by, and is necessary to, the burgeoning Landscape Urbanism profession. Reliance on the void introduces a basic set of dilemmas: In order to focus on the space between buildings, there must be buildings; planning creative programming between infrastructural systems requires existing infrastructure; implementing a proposed hybrid ecology between urban eco-systems and human eco-systems requires human eco-systems. All of these very specific examples result in a single common statement: In order to have an urban void, there first needs to be an urban, or rather a recognizable urban density. (more…)

Tags: Detroit Urban Strategies
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CRISS ANGEL PROJECT PUBLISHED IN CONTRACT

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

PROJECT. The Criss Angel BeLIEve project has been published in the March edition of CONTRACT magazine. The project is a re-design of the entry sequence into the theatre at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in conjunction with the debut of the newest permanent Cirque du Soleil show, Criss Angel BeLIEve. Its opening in September 2008 provided a sneak-peak into the major renovations that will occur at The Luxor through 2009. The 2.1M project began in October 2007 and opened for the public in October 2008. Project scope includes a Box Office & Retail space of 6000 square feet and Bar/Lounge of 14,500 square feet.

CONCEPT. By reflecting the enigmatic characters of Criss Angel and Cirque du Soleil, the architect’s call to action was to redesign the Box Office, Entrance, Retail Space and Theatre Bar/Lounge for the new dramatic experience. This scope allowed a concept which considers the emotional mind-set of the audience as it approaches, spatially and temporally, the theatrical event. The narrative of BeLIEve parallels Lewis Carroll’s classic literary work, “Through the Looking Glass,” as both pieces follow a protagonist’s journey into a whimsically absurd alternate reality. In each piece, access to this other world is gained only through a very specific, yet different, threshold; one tangible (the looking glass), one experiential (an accident induced dream). Thresholds between levels of certainty, as literary premise inspired the architect to consider a similar perception when designing the tangible space of (sub)conscious journey. The architectural realization of this journey provides a sequence of spatial thresholds (stages) through which BeLIEvers are slowly submerged. Passing through each stage means passing into progressive levels of engagement with the artist’s warped perception, the ultimate destination. (more…)

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