#rorschmap

I love the internet.

WEEKEND READING: December 29th, 2007-January 4th, 2008

It's been a crazy week for this blogger offline, but regular posting should resume next week. I have a ton of stuff backed up from the holiday season, so Where might get busy soon. As for Weekend Reading, we're starting off 2008 with some great material!

ITEM ONE: Sick of suburban sprawl? So are the people behind Project Outrage.

ITEM TWO: Der Spiegel profiles Albert Speer, Jr., son of the devil's architect.

ITEM THREE: Deputydog features a short but visually impressive post on one of my all-time favorite buildings (now, sadly, demolished), Diller + Scofidio's brilliant Blur pavillion. (photo credit)

ITEM FOUR: WorldChanging rounds up the top city-related stories from its 2007 archives.

ITEM FIVE: Social Practice points to this site, Encounters, which "[explores] informal education, lifelong learning, and social action."

ITEM SIX: Collapse author Jared Diamond's much-ballyhooed article on scales of consumption in the NY Times.

ITEM SEVEN: Do cities have color schemes? Brand Avenue takes a look.


Enjoy your weekend. It's 27 degrees in Chicago right now...feels like summer!!

Mapping Chicago @ the Chicago History Museum

Mapping Chicago, the inaugural exhibit in the Chicago History Museum's new Skyline gallery, is also one of the inaugural exhibits in Chicago's Festival of Maps. The show, which opened near the end of September, divides the spacious new gallery into three distinct areas, each with its own theme, and shows the city of Chicago in various stages of its history, and from a variety of distinct perspectives. Overall it's a bit of a grab-bag, but certainly worth your while.

Cities are places with vast histories comprised of millions upon millions of stories stretched across hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years. As the curators of Mapping Chicago point out several times in this exhibit (most entertainingly, at one point, in the rather incredulous "voice" of the city itself) it is virtually impossible to create a map of a city that really encapsulates what Chicago is about. Buildings go up and are torn down, streets are widened or erased, demographics shift as people come and go, and all of this contributes to the fact that as soon as a map of a place as dynamic as Chicago is made, it is in some way already out of date.

The first area of the exhibit, then, attempts to piece together a historic portrait of the city. From a detailed map of the area destroyed by the Great Fire to a map of the original settlement showing the original Native American trails that crisscrossed the area, this introductory set makes no attempt to show Chicago as it is. The unofficial centerpiece here, a wall-sized full-color birds-eye view map of the Loop from the early 1900s drawn in exquisite detail, subtly underlines the show's message; of the many large and grand structures that surely seemed as permanent as time itself when this map was completed, only a few are still around today. Even monumental constructions like the old Federal Building or the Masonic Temple (then the city's tallest building) are long gone.

It's in the second area that the exhibit sags a bit as it veers rather noticeably off course to demonstrate by video and through several kid-friendly kiosks how two-dimensional maps are formed into globes. Replogle Globes, a major manufacturer of the objects, is a sponsor of the installation. This middle section is interesting in and of itself, as it answers in careful detail one of those questions that you'd never thought to ask but find yourself very curious about once it's been asked for you. Still, the section can't help feeling like a commercial in the middle of a good show since the subject matter is only tangentially (at best) connected to that of the overall exhibit. At any rate, it's fun for kids, and certainly no reason to skip Mapping Chicago altogether.

The third and final area is separated from the other two by a very unconventional map made up of a cluster of very large, very colorful representations of Chicago landmarks. It is a sculptural creation made of oversized drawings by children from around the city that sets the tone for the area of the exhibit that shows how the diverse and divergent perceptions of the city by its many inhabitants over the years has created some very interesting and unconventional maps of the city. A pinball machine printed with a map of the 1933 World's Fair, a color-coded map of building heights in the Loop in the early 20th Century, large digitally-produced maps of SOM's plan for the city's 2016 Olympic bid -- all of these and more are on display in this part of the exhibit. Together, they bring home the message that a city like Chicago is a constantly-changing thing, exciting and mysterious in the way that it constantly eludes the cartographer. The city is the subject in all of these maps, but ironically this collection, brought together, puts the focus on the map-makers. After all, in the end it is the people -- not the physical environment -- that make the city what it is at any given moment.

IF YOU GO
Mapping Chicago is on display at the Chicago History Museum until January 6th, 2008. The museum is open seven days a week; the entry fee is $14 for adults, $12 for students and seniors, and free for children under 12. Hours vary, so check the website for more details. While you're there, if you are in need of some more map action, don't miss the permanent exhibit Chicago: Crossroads of America, which features a number of detailed maps from the city's two world's fairs. Also on display: gorgeous architectural models of the Chrysler Motors and Transportation Buildings from the '33 Fair.

Links:
Mapping Chicago (Chicago History Museum)

(PS -- Where is back in business! Thanks to all of the fine people at the North Michigan Avenue Apple Store who saved my hard drive and, by extension, my sanity. They are awesome.)

Expotecture

World's Fairs and Expositions have produced some of the most memorable architectural statements in history: The Crystal Palace, the Eiffel Tower, the White City, Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, the Atomium, and the Seattle Space Needle are all excellent examples. While the general idea behind these events is to bring everyone together, there has always been a very competetive undercurrent. Every country comes dressed to impress, and the host has to work extra hard to out-do the guests. Hence the landmark centerpieces.

An announcement from the people who run ExpoMuseum (a site that is most certainly worth a long rainy day's visit) popped up in my inbox tonight. The topic was the selection of the central building for Wroclaw, Poland's bid for Expo 2012. (If you live in North America and are surprised to hear that these things are still going on, it might have something to do with the fact that there hasn't been an expo here since 1988.) It's fun and it's funky, and it kind of looks like what Fuller's dome might have looked like after falling down a long, winding flight of stairs. Or if it were wrapped around the Matterhorn in Disneyland; the building is, in fact, intended to look like a mountain.

After all of that talk about the Tower of the Sun yesterday, I could try to draw some nifty parallels or make a witty observation about Expo architecture and how expos use deliberately overwhelming architecture to create a heightened sense of place, but for once I'll just shut up and let you oggle the architecture -- click the b&w image above for a larger, full-color version.

Tonight, we end with this passage from the announcement: "The subject proposed by Wroclaw for the Expo is 'The leisure culture in world’s economies'. [Guallart's] building is a mountain of activities of one hundred meters high, and contemplates auditoriums, administrative zones, offices, restaurants, a viewpoint and a cableway in its top. The building was inspired [by] the Centennial Hall, built by Max Berg in Wroclaw in 1913 (when [it] was still part of the German land) and was the biggest concrete cupola of the world [at the time]. Guallart's proposal contemplates its use during the Expo, as its transformation [into] a leisure and business centre before the event."

(I can't for the life of me find the announcement or the image anywhere online, so until I do I'm rehosting the image...if anyone knows where it is being officially hosted, please let me know and I'll correct the link.)


Links:
ExpoMuseum.com (If you're into Expos, check out their blog.)

Vicente Guallart