Space & Culture

Here is a wonderful post from a fantastic blog.  Reality follows fiction with the case of the development of ‘Ebbsfleet’, a suburb centred ‘Bluewater’ on the exurban super mall just Southeast of London.  My gosh, I thought, they’re trying to build Edmonton.  Already living in the Ballardosphere, I can affirm that Bluewater is a descendant of the West Edmonton Mall, the prairie experiment in mixing leisure and retail in one mall such that roller coaster and shoe store, skating rink and cell phone kiosk, wave pool and discount retailer confront each other in the indoor spaces. J.G. Ballard and Ian Sinclair come together as inspiration for a post-twentieth century, post-work residential world.

- Rob

To mark the London Festival of Architecture, The Guardian’s Jonathan Glancey explores in a short video whether the capital’s waterlogged past holds the key to its wet and wild future.

- Matthew

Aldo van Eyck - Writings, 1 & 2 + DVD [Vol. 1: The Child, the City and the Artist & Vol. 2: Collected Articles and Other Writings]. Vincent Ligtelijn and Francis Strauven, eds. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij SUN, 2008. 238 pp + 744 pp.

Space & Culture has previously posted on innovative architects (for example, here and here), and on youth perspectives on urban design (e.g. here).

Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999), the son of a Dutch poet, grew up in the Netherlands and the UK and studied architecture at the ETH Zürich. Apart from the built work, he is best known as one of the founding members of Team 10, as an influential teacher of architecture and for his activities within the group CoBrA. A two-volume compendium of his collected writings and a DVD, all in English, displayed in a neat box, now present us the architect-writer.

One volume includes a collection of his articles, texts and statements, which are categorized by the editors either thematically or as published in the Dutch magazine Forum. The topics range from “Advocate of the avant-garde in postwar CIAM, (1947-1953)”, “Cobra”, “Playgrounds” to “The Problem of Number”, “Polemics on postmodernism” and “On architects and other artists”, and others. The book is supplemented with a short biography, his major projects and buildings, a chronological list of his own writings as well as the ones on Van Eyck by other authors. The illustrations, some in black and white, others in color, include photographs of himself often portrayed together with his wife as well as his artist and architect colleagues, sketches, plans and diagrams, and altogether give a good impression of the time and the context of Van Eyck’s writings.

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Paysage de champs colorés près de Sarraud, Vaucluse, France (44°01’ N – 5°24’ E)

Mr. Cassan and his family cultivate more than 600 acres of both traditional or ‘true’ lavender and lavendin, a sterile, hardier and much more prolific hybrid with a cruder, industrial, camphor scent. His great-grandfather was among the first lavender middlemen in France, roaming the back roads on horseback and paying farmers for the lavender that grew wild in their dry, chalky fields; his grandfather was among the first generation in France to cultivate the plants as a commercial cash crop. Until 3 most mornings these days, Mr. Cassan’s son Benoît runs two huge stills that transform the cut plants from their own and neighboring farms into essences that will infuse products as varied as body moisturizer and window spray. The elder Mr. Cassan also has begun to promote lavender aromatherapy to help the town’s economy. ‘My goal is to build our economy around lavender’s essential oils,’ Mr. Cassan said, ‘to give conferences and seminars, to hand out prizes. This is how we are forging our way into the future’.”

NY Times: In Provence, Commerce’s Scent Is Tinged With Lavender

See also: Les Routes de la Lavande

- Anne

The Atlantic: The Next Slum?

Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading … Civic organizations in some suburbs have begun to mow the lawns around empty houses to keep up the appearance of stability. Police departments are mapping foreclosures in an effort to identify emerging criminal hot spots … For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay … As conventional suburban lifestyles fall out of fashion and walkable urban alternatives proliferate, what will happen to obsolete large-lot houses? One might imagine culs-de-sac being converted to faux Main Streets, or McMansion developments being bulldozed and reforested or turned into parks. But these sorts of transformations are likely to be rare. Suburbia’s many small parcels of land, held by different owners with different motivations, make the purchase of whole neighborhoods almost unheard-of. Condemnation of single-family housing for ‘higher and better use’ is politically difficult, and in most states it has become almost legally impossible in recent years. In any case, the infrastructure supporting large-lot suburban residential areas—roads, sewer and water lines—cannot support the dense development that urbanization would require, and is not easy to upgrade. Once large-lot, suburban residential landscapes are built, they are hard to unbuild…”

Am I the only one thinking about the fortified city and zombie-infested suburbs in George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead?

Also from the archives: Celebrating sub-prime misery

- Anne