The plaintiff in the case owns property in the town of Brookhaven on which he has a house, a pool, and various other buildings. The plaintiff sought approval from the town to construct three new structures, to legalize a few structures already built, and to perform an expansion of his house. After hearings and testimony, [...]
Vertical Urban Factory Exhibit, Photo by Christopher Hall
After a six-month run in New York City, Vertical Urban Factory, curated by Nina Rappaport, opened on May 11th and runs through July 29th at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). A longtime fan of the process of making things and the buildings that contain the manufacturing occupations, as well as of Nina’s exacting and thoughtful research, I took the opportunity to the talk to the curator about the past. But as important, we discussed the present and future of manufacturing in urban neighborhoods. We also got into the new ways of making things that require none of the toxic smokestacks that loomed over the 20th century. After Detroit, Vertical Urban Factory will travel to the Toronto Design Exchange (September 12, 2012 to January 3, 2013).
Vertical Urban Factory Exhibit, Photo by Christopher Hall
Susan S. Szenasy: What made you choose the urban factory as the subject of your research, and what did you hope to find when you started out (when)?
Nina Rappaport: I have been fascinated with the role of the factory as workplace, part of the urban landscape, and a significant place of innovation in design since I was young. I remember visiting the Volvic water bottling plant in France and being intrigued with the process, the volume, the people who make things, the repetitive motions, and the creations that result. Then the architectural historian and urbanist, Reyner Banham’s Concrete Atlantis sparked an interest in the role of the engineer in the design of factories and the way in which Modern architects gravitated to the rawness of the innovative spaces of production. This actually led to my book, Support and Resist, on the role of contemporary engineers in design. I begin the book by discussing a Modern factory in Germany. All the while I wanted to return to the research I had begun on factories, some actually for a Metropolis article in 1995 on the fate of Albert Kahn’s factories on the 100th anniversary of the firm!
The factory as urban landscape and as part of a “spatial product” in the terms of Henri Lefebvre, contributes to the city in a different way than the office as a workplace did–shuffling paper all day but not making anything. And that led me to investigate how the processing and company organization as well as labor issues impact the design of the space.
And now I am drawn to these abandoned factories like a magnetic field of movement in the rust belts of the world; their historic structures the ruins in and of globalization. But what is the potential for a new kind of industry? Still of making things, but perhaps in a different way—both more hands-on and more robotics? How can it still be an urban situation smaller-scale and flexible production?
Continental Motor Car Co Interior
12801 E. Jefferson Ave. Albert Kahn and Ernest Wilby, 1911. Photograph courtesy of Albert Kahn Associates
John Edelman, the CEO of Design Within Reach, has no patience for self-indulgent design. Or, as he disparagingly puts it, design-for-design’s-sake. Unless a product merges beauty and marketability, the ultimate sweet spot, he’s just not interested. For our “So You Want to Be a Product Designer” story, we talked to creative directors at six American manufacturers about how young designers might break through. Edelman asked that Kari Woldum, DWR’s vice president of merchandising, join him in the interview. An edited version of their joint conversation with Derrick Mead follows:
What are best ways for young designers to get noticed by manufacturers?
John Edelman: They can do shows, they can do competitions, and they can reach out to us. But the biggest problem we encounter is most designers are so out of touch with anything that’s marketable, they become valueless. They design for themselves, versus designing for the market. They purpose things that can’t be produced, or they don’t have a full industrial background. A lot of their ideas seem exciting on the exterior, but once you get past the first layer, they don’t become applicable.
Kari Woldum: With DWR, there’s such a perception of us being this giant retailer. There’s not a single email that comes to us that we don’t look through and assess. John said it years ago: “We want there to be a dialogue, and a open platform, no matter who they are, whether we’ve heard of them or not.”
As part of her graduate studies, Emily Washington at Network blog Market Urbanism set out to determine if people were willing to pay a premium for housing in a walkable urban setting. She developed two different models to see if there’s a link between housing prices and Walk Scores in 259 cities. Wouldn’t you know it, she [...]
The elegant Talgo trainsets ordered by the Doyle administration for the Amtrak Hiawatha are nearly complete. But will they ever be used? Alas, Sunday is quite possibly the only day you will ever get to go inside them. Tours, children’s activities, and refreshments will be available at the Talgo assembly facility from noon until 3 p.m. on [...]
With a past life in corporate interior and architectural design in San Francisco, I have been aware of 3Form’s many uses as an interior manufacturing company for several years now. I had seen their products used again and again in our sustainable projects, but the image of a conference room divider using their organic Varia Ecoresin Interlayers, in which bear grass had been entombed within a sheet of 40 percent preconsumer recycled material still resonates in my mind. So when I was asked to preview their new showroom, I was confronted with a question I had never thought of before: how does 3Form use 3Form in their interiors?
Interstate, an outdoor advertising company, applied for permits to construct billboards on two lots in a commercial zone. The applications were denied as billboards were only allowed in Planned Industrial Zones and must meet certain size requirements and setback limitations. Interstate appealed, claiming that the ordinance created a de facto exclusion of Billboards. They claimed [...]
The five top-rated cities for investment prospects are Chengdu, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Shenzhen, according to Mainland China Real Estate Markets 2012: ULI Analysis of City Investment Prospects, the second annual report on China cities released …
Raymond Chow, executive director of Hongkong Land, Simon Treacy, group chief executive of MGPA, Patrick Philips, ULI’s global chief executive, and Richard T.G. Price, Asia-Pacific chief executive of CBRE Global Investors, gathered at the ULI Asia Pacif…
If cities are to continue recovering from the global recession, then livability, flexibility, mobility and choice should remain strongly in focus as planners do their work in the years to come, ULI Chairman Peter Rummell tells delegates to the ULI Asia…
What if, with a push of a button, you could save one of your favorite historic places?
The Partners in Preservation need your help. They need you to press a button and help decide who should get $3 million.
Some of the places on the list are really well known in New York and beyond; the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Apollo Theater, the Coney Island B&B Carousel… The list goes on and on.
Someone recently asked me why I was baffled about the Department of Defense’s decision to use both LEED and a green building code. Here are two reasons:
1. The policy is a waste of taxpayer money.
2. The policy unnecessari…
Maggie Comstock
Policy Analyst
U.S. Green Building Council
This morning, McGraw-Hill Construction (MHC) released its latest SmartMarket Report, “Construction Industry Workforce Shortages: Role of Certification, Training and Green Jobs in Filling the…
Major media outlets can be harsh to bicyclists — often inexplicably or irrationally harsh. Even progressive sites like Salon are not immune, as we’ve written about before. Today Adonia Lugo at Urban Adonia points to another unexpected source of venom: the feminist blogosphere, a.k.a. ladyblogs. These bastions of tolerance and acceptance have a strange blind spot for [...]
At this month’s New Jersey Department of Transportation complete streets workshop in Mercer County, South Brunswick High School (SBHS) Student Council President Ian Moritz and Recording Secretary Dan Gorzynski might have seemed a bit younger than the rest of the crowd, but they came for the same reason as everyone else: they were interested in making streets [...]
