If you can correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native...

crimsun:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and…

Centers of Life and Culture: Arcades, Malls, “Lifestyle Centers”, and Waterfront Plazas

Originally posted here for my NYU Gallatin Spring ‘13 class on A Sense of Place. 

 Witold Rybczynski opens the sixth chapter of his book Makeshift Metropolis, writing: “To understand the implications of an urbanism based on popular demand, it helps to look at an environment where the consumer is paramount: the places where we shop.” He continues to describe the progression in history of the way we shop and interact with our shopping spaces, as well as the different types of shopping structures that have existed throughout different generations.
I found this to be an interesting discussion because it is interesting to me to study the different ways we interact with different consumer spaces. With the constantly evolving shape of the Shopping Frontier, trends are always shifting and dying in nearly-unpredictable ways. The website deadmalls.com, as uncomfortable as it makes me, is signifying a culture where we no longer care for the mall structure we so depended on ten years ago. This got me thinking about the different structures we have adapted to throughout history, and how they have shaped the ways in which we interact with consumption and shopping.
 
Arcades – Bazaars – Markets

The Arcade-style of shopping (which includes markets and bazaars in my mind, since they both also contain the central outdoor and linear facets of the arcade structure), is among the first to have been employed in the planning and building of consumerism. The more naturalistic structure (as compared to modern-day shopping marvels), incorporating outdoor spaces and natural air flow, presumably facilitated the adjustment of society into more steady and organized consumerism, only a short step  from walking down a path through the woods to a path through shopping stalls.  
 
Malls – Outdoor Malls – Outlet/Big Box Stores

As our society and living space grew larger, so did our shopping structures. We now have the capability to build gigantic superstructures that can hold literally hundreds of stores. (The Aventura Mall in Florida1,200,000 of retail space.) This addiction to having every store you’d like to shop at in one place has made us lazy, so we no longer feel it necessary to drive out of our way to look for something we want, when we could settle for something less in a more convenient space. This continues onward in the next trend.
 
Lifestyle Centers

As we spoke about in class, Lifestyle Centers have arisen in many places of late, merging the malls of the past with restaurants, fitness centers (no longer just called ‘gyms’ either), and even doctors in some cases. When learning about this new phenomenon, I could only think of one place in South Florida that fits the bill: the new Village at Gulfstream Park. Upon entering the website (and skipping the obnoxious intro, of course) one is greeted with a panorama photograph of the front of the center, with small arrows pointing to various sections, labeling them “Restaurants & Nightclubs”, “Home Furnishings”, “Fashion”, “Racing &  Casino”. You start to realize that this place is actually a village – a weird, upscale, avant-garde village, but definitely a village. There are eight restaurants and nightclubs, ten home furnishings stores, twenty fashion stores, and various other offices and services (including a nail spa, a car wash, and a concierge service); there’s even the Flowrider® “simulated, indoor surfing ride” in  their surf-wear shop. What?
I used to joke about how I could feasibly (and would love to) live at the mall; sleep at Crate & Barrel, eat meals at the food court and starbucks, and roam around endlessly enjoying all of the gadgets and clothes at my disposal. But really, one could actually live at the Village. Lifestyle centers pull you in, and they will never ever let you go.
 

 
Waterfront Plazas

The Shoppes at Waterways in Aventura, Florida is an outdoor shopping/lifestyle center along the intracoastal waters of South Florida, teeming with mixed usage. The shops are flanked by neighborhoods of townhouses and apartment buildings, most of whom have the canals in their backyard. The bay is hence filled to the brim (pun not intended) with boats and yachts belonging to the homeowner neighbors of the Shoppes, which makes for an interesting walk along the waterfront walkway, reading names and origins of boats as we pass by them (also fun to make friendly conversation with the people sitting out on their boats).
 
What brings all of these different aspects of urbanism together is the concept that more is more. The more you can pack into one structure or space – for habitation, business, daily necessities, dining, education, health, etc. – the better. This thought process – while great for such things as the creative process or capitalism – is harmful to us in the long run, as we will eventually run out of the resources and space to continue to provide for ourselves larger and more-encompassing life-and-culture-centers. Eventually, it seems, our world will consist of many insular centers with living complexes, shopping centers, factories, and small amusement and entertainment complexes, all housed within one massive structure, so that we never have to leave our communities and interact with other people or places because everything we need is with us for eternity. Ouch.

Harmony Found through the Fusion of Two Contesting Visions

Originally posted here for my Spring ‘13 Gallatin class on A Sense of Place
   

While on our class walking tour through our small part of the East Village, performing our own sidewalk ballet of touring and traversing routes we know well, we struck some very Jacobs-Moses-esque chords in our class discussion. Seemingly out of the blue, strong opinions have been formed and are being articulated through our conversations regarding the benefits of various implementations of NYU 2031.
I myself have strong feelings about the Sasaki Gardens at Washington Square Village, but more importantly, I feel that the true heart and soul of New York City – and really any successful city in the world – is the fusion of the bustling and the still. I visit the Sasaki Gardens frequently, and often go out of my way on routes to and from class in order to spend some time there. For me, entering the small park and immersing myself in the silence there is the best way to clear the excess thoughts that build up throughout the day, and to escape – albeit temporarily – from city life. I feel that this is an extremely important feature for cities, especially those as large and exciting as New York City, to have; the tranquil natures of Sasaki Gardens and other similar spaces (such as Washington Mews or the One Worldwide Plaza further uptown) offset all that is happening outside, and provide an important contemplative space in a city focused on action rather than thought. I do understand the point made about exclusivity of these spaces. Though they are public their inaccessibility and inherent externality being tucked away in quieter corners of the city, block off these spaces from more widely-spread public usage, which is in fact part of their appeal. They wouldn’t be as quiet if they were as crowded and used as Washington Square Park or Madison Square Park.
The point is that there are more productive and effective ways to open up these spaces to larger amounts of people – without destroying the calm they provide to those who need it. There is no doubt that communal uses of the park space would be mutually beneficial to both the community and the sense of place of Sasaki Gardens. For instance, a community yoga class, or children’s activities or art classes could be organized and scheduled in the park by neighborhood committees. (Those of us who had the good fortune of looking up at the right moment during our time at Sasaki Gardens all got a glimpse of what a good space the park is for the practice of Tai-Chi). I’m not saying that Sasaki Gardens is a perfect space. It is closed off and isolated and inaccessible to the greater population; it is not the most efficient use of square footage, but it is a feature our city needs in order to thrive and keep providing for all of its inhabitants.
In addition to this fusion of city and nature, I find that a mix of ideas of Moses and Jacobs is key to constructing a ‘perfect city’ (note: I do happen to find NYC to be pretty-damn-perfect). Moses was always looking at the bigger picture: how to accommodate, construct, and rebuild for the most amount of people. Jacobs, on the other hand, was fine-details-oriented: she was concerned for small neighborhoods and communities, and individual people. It’s true that without the money and economic stimulation brought in by Moses’ many projects, NYC might not have continued to grow into the city it is – so central to American and international life. However, if Moses had been left unchecked, and not fought by Jane Jacobs, many important neighborhoods and communities that make up the ‘heart and soul’ of Manhattan would have been lost forever.
Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses both made significant contributions to the shaping of New York City, but a huge consideration is that hindsight is 20/20. I find it difficult to imagine living when these battles were happening, and trying to understand and make sense of everything going on at that time. I’m not sure where I would have fallen in the debate, though I am certain I am happy with how it turned out. In retrospect, obviously the West Village has continued to thrive and be awesome, but at the time it might have seemed awfully gloomy. Similarly, while right now the neighborhood and school may seem to demand certain changes or not, it will only be clear years and years from now when we’ll either be pleased or disappointed and right now it’s hard for me to know which it is. 

Stuyvesant Town; Taking Comfort in Uniformity

Originally posted here for my Spring ‘13 Gallatin class A Sense of Place
  

A friend of mine at NYU is a Senior studying Architecture and Urban Design, with plans to complete a Masters program in Architecture at Columbia University next year. So, the other day while eating lunch with him, I was really excited to show off my newly-gained knowledge in his subject-matter. After name-dropping Le Corbusier and Jane Jacobs and doing a short recognition game of Radiant City, Garden City, and City Beautiful, I mentioned that I had just read the first three chapters of Makeshift Metropolis. Impressed with my advanced reading in a subject matter so foreign from my own, he mentioned that he had just read the book for fun over Spring Break, and we got into a good discussion about good ol’ Witold Rybczynski.
8Being a resident of Stuy Town himself (admittedly though, he lives on the edge of the neighborhood, on 14th street and 1st Avenue), I asked my friend what he thought about his neighborhood, as we had mentioned it in class quite a few times. He summed it up pretty well: “What’s there to think? I like living there, it’s convenient, and it serves the purpose for which it was built: a post-war housing complex developed for veterans.” The seemingly simple statement was not notable at the time (I was peeved that he didn’t have more to say), but the more I have thought about it, the more it made so much sense to me in its simplicity. Stuyvesant Town was, in fact, planned in response to a housing crisis after the World Wars and the Depression, with a provision made that veterans’ rental applications would have selection priority.
Still today, Stuy Town successfully provides affordable housing space for a widely-varied population, and its structure is incredibly conducive to community-building. The free-for-residents ice-rink that opens up every winter definitely does some good as well. The so-called “beauty” of Stuyvesant Town as a neighborhood, then, does not lie in its inherent aestheticism (though I happen to find the measured parallelism and symmetry calming, rather than seeing an obtrusive sameness in the buildings), but in its ability to effectually provide a shelter and a home for so many people and families, and its unique ability to create a space for escape from the city.
Walking through the neighborhood later that day, I still could not comprehend what is so unlikeable about it; the paths between the buildings are serene and though I am slightly concerned with the abnormally dark coloring of the squirrels that populate that area specifically (not joking - this is a weird thing), I can’t help but feel pleasantly relaxed when walking around Stuy Town. Coming from Miami, the red brick is a foreign luxury for me, and I enjoy seeing families all around walking with their children and dogs. Suburbanism has its detractors - and I often count myself among them - but I can’t explain the joy I get from escaping the city into this quaint suburban shell every once in a while.
Rybczynski opens his book with a quote by Lewis Mumford: “The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel, or an ant heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art.” The fact of the matter is that no matter the context, the making of meaning is incredibly personal; how much more so is the making of meaning of a place. I do not see how there can be any means of measuring a space’s sense of place, and I certainly do not think arbitrary rules of aestheticism - which is also extremely subjective - is an appropriate guide for determining the sense of place.
Every neighborhood and town has its own purpose to serve, and thus should not be judge based on standards made by critics or “scholars”, but rather should be judged based on how well it serves its purpose, and how its residents interact with their space and with each other. Does this seem too simplistic? On the contrary, I would say that being stunned to disgust by Stuyvesant Town’s jarring equality, and jumping to the conclusion that it was built for efficiency and therefore lacks a sense of place, is simplistic. Recognizing the nuance of consistency and evenness - rather than deeming it uniform or monotonous - is key in understanding and appreciating a space as unique as Stuy Town, and this nuance is why I enjoy it.

The White City; Bauhaus History of Tel Aviv

Originally posted here, on 03/31, for my  Gallatin Spring 2013 class on A Sense of Place

I am currently in Tel Aviv, Israel, celebrating the holiday of Passover with my family. While here, I spent a bit of time one afternoon at the Bauhaus Center, learning more about Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus and modern architecture history.
“Bauhaus” has been a familiar term to me for quite some time, not because I have been very interested in architecture or design, but it comes up a lot when spending time traveling in and learning about Tel Aviv. Pictured above is my favorite building in the world. It is located at 181 HaYarkon Street, a major landmark in southern Tel Aviv, near the coast and not far from Jaffa. According to the small amount of real research I have done on this building, it is a residential building designed by Leon Gaignebet, and was built between 1982-1985, but was not inhabited until 1989 due to licensing battles (understandably!). I have always thought it looked like a skeleton, but one of my friends who lived nearby had a slightly-less-morbid view, and always said it reminded her of origami and paper art. Either way, it is definitely interesting and anyone who has spent time in Tel Aviv-Jaffa will surely know it. This building itself is not Bauhaus, but more in the style of Gaudi. Even so, it is incredibly interesting and odd, and a good starting point to talking about Bauhaus architecture in Tel Aviv.

The city of Tel Aviv was founded in 1909, on the sandy beach outside of Jaffa. It was conceptualized as a new garden city - to be a hub of modernity and aestheticism in the already historically and agriculturally rich country. The city was planned by its first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, and British urban planner Patrick Geddes. In the early 1930s Jewish architects who had studied at the Bauhaus School in Germany - such as Arieh Sharon - began fleeing Europe with the rise of Nazi power, and immigrated to Tel Aviv. Wanting to find their niche in their new society, they came to the burgeoning new city of Tel Aviv to make their mark.
Today Tel Aviv is often known as “HaIr HaLevana” - “The White City”, referencing the hundreds of Bauhaus buildings that have been built around the city, and their odd white color. Below is a short review of some of the most prominent Bauhaus designs in the city, courtesy of what I learned from my trip to the Bauhaus Center on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.


This building, known as the “Frankenstein House” (left), is located at 26 Chisin Street, and was designed by an architect named A. Pepper in 1937. It is characterized by its vertical axis, and its symmetrical façade emphasized by the stairway’s glass wall. The short and wide building has its own character to it, adding to the area’s sense of place by creating a landmark and a focal point for sentimentality. The building has personality lending to its unique appearance.
The Itzhak Elishav house, on the right, is located at 27 Mazeh Street, and was built in 1933 by Yosef Berlin. It is described as having a “tendency toward the ornamental style and ornamentation of silicate bricks on the façade.” This means it looks embelished and elaborately decorative. Its symmetrical style is reminiscent and reflective of the Frankenstein House, built in the same style around the same time.
Many Bauhaus and modern-style buildings in Tel Aviv were built in the 1930s by German Jewish architects who studied Bauhaus, but many were also built later on to replicate Bauhaus style.


This building (on the left), while built in 2001, was designed with the Bauhaus style in mind. It is located at 70 Dizengoff Street, along the edge of the famous shopping and cultural center, Dizengoff Center. The rounded balconies create a futuristic appearance, while the white stone and glass balustrades - the pristine colors of the building - create a clean, new atmosphere which maintain the Bauhaus style and put it in a more modern context. This is representative of many buildings in Tel Aviv which - while built in the late 90s and 2000s - were designed in Bauhaus style and add to the cultural and aesthetic richness of the city.
The new and old Bauhaus buildings of Tel Aviv both recreate and preserve the original conceptual garden city aestheticism, and carry on the legacy of the great Bauhaus-educated architects of the city. In addition to the new buildings. many of the old ones have gone through preservation processes, with many architects painstakingly working to maintain the original building’s design while reimagining concepts and re-configuring structure.
This building (on the right), though I do not know very much about its history, is also notable for its extreme angles and interesting shapes.

The Wilderness Downtown: Navigating Neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan

Originally posted here for my NYU Gallatin course A Sense of Place (Spring ‘13)

I once stumbled upon a video online which I believe has greatly shaped my perspective on walking and navigating the city. The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive multimedia video/Chrome Experiment/HTML5 short/jargony project made by director Chris Milk for the song “We Used to Wait” by the band The Arcade Fire. You can watch the video here; the experience is innovative and aesthetically pleasing, and takes an interesting idea to the digital realm. The experience unfolds through pop-up windows showing clips from Google Maps satellite and streetview of the viewer’s address (input before the beginning of the video), interspersed with clips of birds, a man running outdoors, and cityscapes - personalizing the experience so that it feels like it is a glimpse into the viewer’s mind.
The middle verse of the song goes “We used to wait. We used to waste hours just walking around. We used to wait. All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown.” I thought about these lyrics as I walked around the area - exploring and discovering my new home - during my Freshman year at NYU. No matter how I tried - and still try - I could not relate. While I frequently label my subway commutes around the city as wasted hours, I feel that my walks have always been invaluable in my understanding of the city and its functions, and this understanding is invaluable to properly taking advantage of all resources available when living in the city.
Thinking about walking and imagining the city, I realized how much my psyche was influenced by this online video. I had initially assumed that people (or at least I, myself) would picture the pathway, the route, or the street, much like what is shown in the pop-up windows of The Wilderness Downtown - basically, I expected we would all be looking down at our feet rather than up at the world around us. I have spent the last few weeks trying to picture each walk I would take before embarking on my way, imagining the route I had ahead of me. Aside from finding that this greatly helped me to better estimate commute times and accept delays more easily, I also found that while I did picture the paths by way of my feet, when I made the walks in real time I paid much more attention ahead of me, at the sky, at buildings, at people’s faces as we pass each other.
New York City is easily legible. Though neighborhoods sometimes overlap (someone who lives on 5th Avenue and 16th street, for example - do they live in Chelsea or “Union Square”?), there is a general understanding of the layout of the city, and it is easily conveyed verbally, or visually in maps. The keyword here, of course, is “general”; New York City as a landmass and functioning city is generally legible, in a wider scope. However, more microcosmically, individual neighborhoods vary in legibility versus imageability. I will use as a cross-study the two neighborhoods I traverse most often, Union Square and the West Village.
Union Square falls well into the grid pattern of the Manhattan standard - its paths and edges are clearly marked and delineated, easily legible. However, its sense of place in mapping and cityscaping begins to falter when taking an imagerablity approach. On Union Square there is a lot of art; there are memorial statues of Andy Warhol, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Marquis de Lafayette, and Gandhi; there is also the Independence Flagstaff, and an open space just east of Union Square to which they rotate in art installations. The vast array of potential landmarks, as well as their relatively small sizes and tucked-away locations, means most people who think they know Union Square do not know about all of these landmarks and makes them unusable to map the terrain.
The most distinct landmark of Union Square - and perhaps the only one I would classify as a landmark at all - is The Metronome, the art instillation at the top of a building on the southeast corner of Broadway and 14th street (above the Duane Reade). What makes this spot so distinct - and so much more distinct than the other art instillations in and around Union Square - are its size and immense visibility. No matter how many people are milling about - and there are often many - the Metronome is visible to all points between 17th street and 14th street, Broadway and Union Square West. This is a double-edged sword; while its accessibility makes the Metronome a viable landmark for those wishing to visually describe their position on Union Square, it also creates quandary of precision. Saying “I am facing the Metronome” means literally nothing except that the person speaking is turned toward a Southerly direction. On a crowded Summer afternoon, describing to a friend where to meet on Union Square becomes a verbal playground, and one in which all the children playing are blindfolded and no one knows where the monkey bars are.
The West Village, on the other hand, is unnavigable to an outsider, with its winding streets and haphazardly random intersections. The West Village’s edges are shady at best (at what point in Washington Square Park does the West Village end and “NYU” begin?) and its paths are almost unknowable. However, its landmarks are largely distinct, strong, and well-known. Washington Square Arch. The Dog Run. Christopher Street.These are as recognizable to natives as to part-time visitors, and this greatly eases the legibility of problems of the neighborhood.


Pictured above: I had my roommates draw me maps of areas they knew well. Though I didn’t get much out of it, it was a fun activity and provided good imagery.