Although these monuments are full of symbolism that no longer applies, their beauty remains nonetheless.

Spomenik is the Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian word for monument. In the 1960s and 70s, the former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito commissioned these structures to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). Designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković…), the strong and powerful blending of art and architecture come together in these monuments to convey the sense of confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. However, after the Republic gradually died down in 1992, they lost their sense of wonder and no longer attracted the millions of visitors a year.  From 2006 to 2009, Jan Kempenaers toured around the ex-Yugoslavia region to photograph these amazing structures.

source: Crack Two

See more images here

According to SBS Dateline (Australian TV):

Vast new cities of apartments and shops are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost completely uninhabited ghost towns.

 It’s all part of the government’s efforts to keep the economy booming, and there are many people who would love to move in, but it’s simply too expensive for most.

Video journalist Adrian Brown wanders through malls of vacant shops, and roads lined with empty apartment buildings… 64 million apartments are said to be empty across the country and one of the few shop owners says he once didn’t sell anything for four or five days.

 So are the efforts to boost the economy going to end up having the opposite effect and creating a financial crisis for China?

Statement:

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry. Until the 50′s, its population rose to almost 2 million people. Detroit was the fourth most important city in the United States. It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods. Increasing segregation and de-industrialization caused violent riots in 1967. The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew. Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states. Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.

Since the 50′s, “Motor City” lost more than half of its population.

Untied Artists Theater

William Livingstone House

Fisher Body 21 Plant

See more photos from this project here

Look for The Ruins of Detroit book out sometime this August via Steidl

posted by: Harold Johns III

William Henry Goodyear (1846–1923), who put together the World’s Columbian Exposition photo archive, was the Brooklyn Museum’s first curator of fine arts (1899–1923) and a renowned art and architectural historian. In addition to being a vital force in the early years of the Museum’s fine arts department, Goodyear did extensive research in art history and architectural theory.

The entire Goodyear Archival Collection can also be found on the Brooklyn Museum Web site and on the Museum’s flickr.

posted by: Harold Johns III

Built in 1997 and located in Henderson, Nevada, this $126,000 replica of the Simpsons’ house was built for a contest held by Fox, Pepsi and the homebuilder to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the subversive cartoon.

Which as you might have guessed was no easy task given the challenges the architects faced in bringing an animated house to reality. Turns out the cartoon house didn’t have a single load bearing wall, while the dimensions of the garage could not fit a real car. On top of that, the land appropriated by Fox for the construction could only accommodate a 40 foot wide house – the TV version was estimated to be the equivalent of 50 feet. And there was also the issue of how to reconcile the many changes the Simpson house went through over the years.

In the end, the architects estimated they were able to incorporate 90% of the animated house into the real-life version, going so far as to include Bart’s treehouse, a swing set and Homer’s back yard barbecue.

Sadly, the winner of the contest chose the cash prize instead of the house. The people who eventually did move in painted the exterior a less cartoony color. Rumor has it a Bart Simpson drawing by the show’s creator Matt Groening can still be found on the sidewalk in front of the house.

source: Design Fetish
posted by: Brent Carter

Sometimes while researching a blog post you’ll find another site has already beat you to it. In this case, while gathering information on the most offensive architectural projects on hold due to the economic recession I came across Flavorwire’s list of  “Architectural Projects That Seemed Like a Great Idea at the Time.” Their list conveys many of my ideas in much simpler terms, so I’ve decided to abandon my effort and simply pass along the information from Flavorwire.

Included in the list are six projects, like the under water hotel known as Hydropolis (pictured above) in Dubai, that are so absurd in scope and cost you’ll wonder how anyone, even an international banker, could be convinced to build them.

Read the full list here

posted by: Brent Carter

Meet Dan Phillips of Huntsville, TX, changing the world one house at a time. His local building initiative Phoenix Commotion works with low income individuals to build their own homes using 80-85% recycled materials. Read the Phoenix Commotion mission statement below and watch the video to see some of Phillips’ unique and low-cost homes.

Mission Statement:
“The Phoenix Commotion is a local building initiative created to prove that constructing homes with recycled and salvaged materials has viable place in the building industry. This operation uses only apprentice labor and teaches marketable skills to anyone with a work ethic who is willing to swing a hammer. By keeping labor costs low and using donated or found materials, the homes created are truly affordable. No two are alike due to the myriad of materials used, so there is an artistic element that makes Phoenix Commotion homes truly unique. We target single parents, artists, and families with low incomes. We require the homeowner to be involved with the planning and construction of their own home. The result is a person who is empowered, not only by the use of knowledge and building skills, but by the opportunity to become part of a community as a vested participant.” (Continue reading here)

posted by: Tricia Rock

The fifth year architectural design studio of the University of Kansas in conjunction with El Dorado Inc. presents “Fill:Refill,” an exhibition of 50 projects for Jarboe Pool. The reception/exhibition is Wednesday, May13th at Pachamama’s in Lawrence, KS beginning at 7:30 pm. Stop by to see the end product of a semester’s worth of hard work by these emerging architects and soon to be graduates, including The Rathaus’ own s.a.johnson.

Learn more about Fill:Refill here.

posted by: Brent Carter

For our sixth and final installment of architectural projects dedicated to vertical farming, renewable energies, and the construction of a better, greener 21st century, s.a.johnson discusses Aberrant Agriculture by University of Kansas Masters of Architecture student Scott Johnson, also known to the Rathaus as s.a.johnson.

The sixth and final post on vertical architecture presented by The Rathaus is titled Aberrant Agriculture. Designed by Scott Johnson, a Masters of Architecture student at the University of Kansas, the 30-story high-rise takes a fresh, new approach to growing food in an urban environment. Aberrant Agriculture combines vertical farming, residential, hotel, and retail functions into a single, hybrid structure that is intended to be self-sufficient in regards to its carbon footprint and impact upon the environment.

While other concepts for vertical farms efficiently site their towers within the urban fabric, thus minimizing the need for food distribution through transport, Johnson’s project entirely eliminates the need for transport by processing and vending the entirety of the building’s food yield on site. The building is biomimetically influenced by the anatomical make-up of a sea cucumber. A sea cucumber’s exterior skin is structured for protection while its interior anatomy is dedicated to sustenance. They have generally flaccid exterior shells that are capable of becoming very rigid when endangered and their interior anatomy is primarily dedicated to the processing of food and reproduction. These systems are reproduced in Johnson’s project. The vertical farm is an entity in the building’s core that nourishes and provides for the hotel and residential occupants inhabiting the building’s shell who in turn react to the climatic conditions that Chicago presents them.

The agricultural core hydroponically grows 12 Power Foods, as Johnson calls them, that are known for their high concentrations of essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and protein. These foods include: citrus fruits, berries, tomatoes, onions, peppers, broccoli, spinach, sweet potatoes, eggs, black beans, garlic, and various herbs. The production of food, in accompaniment with housing, creates a different form of sustainable building than has been planned by organizations like LEED. The on-site food production creates a building that not only sustains itself but the people that inhabit it daily. Johnson does not, however, intend for the vertical farm’s yield to be the only source of sustenance for the occupants but for the yield produced to theoretically equal the annual need, in caloric intake, of the residents of the building. This system thus seeks to minimize and offset the consumption of food produced hundreds or thousands of miles away and shipped to Chicago. All excess produce will be for sale to the public in a market on the easily accessible third level of the building.

The vertical farm employs similar systems to those seen in urban farming projects by SOA Architects, William McDonough, Mithun, Gordon Graff and Dickson Despommier. Fresh water is drawn from Lake Michigan and stored in underground cisterns. Hydroponic systems pump nutrient infused water to all plants. Lighting is carefully monitored in each growing area to the specific preferences of individual crops. Humidity and room temperature are likewise adjusted for individual plants and also according to sunlight and circadian growing cycles. Ventilation is controlled separately in each growing space and is capable of drawing newly circulated air from the building’s spacious atrium. Finally, energy is produced from burning the large amounts of methane in plant waste and harvesting the steam for electricity.

An urban agriculture initiative that draws water from a local resource, in this case Lake Michigan, would make Chicago an influential precedent setter for other Great Lakes cities such as Buffalo, Detroit, Cleve­land, Toledo, Erie, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Toronto, and Duluth. Imagine traveling to the city to catch a glimpse of an agricultural environment. By creating an accessible farm at the core of a residential high-rise, residents will reestablish a relation­ship with the food they consume. People will rely on the build­ing for sustenance rather than simply for shelter and thus feel a deeper connection with the building and its occupants than with other buildings in their environments.

Proposals for hybrid buildings such as Johnson’s have the ability to transform our built environments and reinvent the cities we know. Johnson asserts that the implementation of urban agriculture, housed in towers throughout cities worldwide, is an efficient, sustainable, achiev­able, and above all, local solution to many global problems.

A pdf of the Aberrant Agriculture proposal can be downloaded here or please visit verticalfarm.com to see the new addition of Aberrant Agriculture to its site and check in on the other vertical farm designs mentioned above.

For more and higher quality images of Aberrant Agriculture please visit Johnson’s Flickr account.

For our fifth installment of six architectural projects dedicated to vertical farming, renewable energies, and the construction of a better, greener 21st century, s.a.johnson discusses the work of microbiologist and esteemed professor of environmental health at Columbia University Dickson Despommier.

Of all the active participants in the vertical farming movement, Dickson Despommier is considered by many to be the most important proponent. As a microbiologist and esteemed professor of environmental health at Columbia University, his research is proving the feasibility of vertical farming while his leadership over student projects is creating architectural precedent for hopeful future implementation.

Despommier is also the founder of VerticalFarm.com, a site created for hosting and posting new information about academic and professional explorations into urban farming, primarily in the form of towers. The site provides an increasingly complex set of essays, designs, news, links, and presentations related to the concepts Despommier is pontificating. Promoting sustainable urban environments and returning the many lands that have been turned into agricultural endeavors back to their native states is an important goal of Despommier, having changed his research interests to focus entirely on this issue.

The systems developed by Despommier are among the most ambitious to date. His towers aim for complete self-sustainability while offsetting the building’s energy use and cost of maintaining hydroponic systems. Popular Science magazine did an article and interview with Despommier which provides some insight into his efforts: “Vertical-axis wind turbines are potentially 50% more efficient and produce energy from the building’s rooftop. LED bulbs are set to light plants at specific wavelengths favored by differing species. Burning methane from 100 tons of sewage produces as many as 19 megawatts of electricity. Systems in each growing room will monitor humidity, temperature and nutrient distribution.”

Popular Science Interview

Colbert Report Interview

The images used in this post are from “The Living Skyscraper: Farming the Urban Skyline” project which was designed by Blake Kurasek, a graduate student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.