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 [Image: From "Future Ruins" by Michelle Lord].Over on Ballardian we read about a new project by artist Michelle Lord, called " Future Ruins." Lord writes: “Inspired by author J.G. Ballard’s literary visions of modernist architectural design and his prophetic views on the technological demise of the urban environment, Future Ruins is a photographic critique of the urban planning of the 1970s and Ballard’s novels of the same period."  [Image: From "Future Ruins" by Michelle Lord]."Set against a backdrop of Birmingham’s few remaining concrete structures such as Spaghetti Junction, Central Library and New Street Station signal box," Lord continues, " Future Ruins aims to highlight the temporality of our landscape, particularly at a time when Birmingham has embarked on a process of regeneration in order to redefine itself." Familiar architectural locations around the city take on the appearance of evacuated spaces occupied by strange, carefully arranged structures, built from the technological detritus of abandoned television sets, cars, computers and domestic appliances. The show is on display until June 23, as part of the UK's 2007 Architecture Week. Lord, meanwhile, is also the artist behind " Four Corners," a photographic exploration of "fictional space." According to the 24 Hour Museum: "The images featured in Four Corners tell the tale of a woman who becomes alienated from the room she occupies as it takes on a strange life of its own. Furniture defies gravity and ghostly figures emerge from the shadows in the dreamlike chamber depicted, understandably giving our subject the creeps as her room appears to transform itself." (For those of you who like this sort of thing, Ballardian actually interviewed me about architecture, urban design, and the novels of J.G. Ballard, back in November).
 Instead of TV, it seems, you can watch 3D reconstructions of ancient storms – hopefully in surround-sound. New Scientist reported a few weeks ago that researchers will soon "be able to visually recreate past typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones, then stand in the middle and watch as the weather pattern swirls around them." It's the storm room: a "simulator that crunches real storm data and turns it into 3D images that can be viewed with virtual-reality goggles." What about the home entertainment version, though? Putting this thing to architectural use. You throw Hurricane Floyd – or Typhoon Tip – up on the walls and read a book while it spins... Or a new kind of teenage rebellion breaks out in the suburbs of middle America: angry sixteen year-olds program tropical storms into the walls of their bedrooms and make their parents faint with vertigo. It's the immersive, weather-reconstructive cinema of the future. (A tiny bit more information is available at New Scientist).
 [Image: Two landscapes photographed from above by David Maisel; from Terminal Mirage].
I'm excited to announce that I'll be participating in a roundtable discussion, on June 28, hosted by the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.
Some long-term BLDGBLOG readers might remember that I interviewed photographer David Maisel about a year and a half ago for Archinect; well, David will be leading a guided tour of his photographs (at noon on June 28) at the Nevada Museum of Art, followed by a lecture about those images (at 7pm, the same day), by writer William L. Fox – ending, finally, with a roundtable discussion featuring Fox, Maisel, and myself.
The Nevada Museum of Art describes Fox as an author and independent scholar who "has spent three decades studying and writing about the ways in which humans understand where they are in landscapes, often focusing on art, mapping, and cognitive science." His many, many books include Driving to Mars: In the Arctic with NASA... and Terra Antarctica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent. He's also got a website.
Fox's work has come up many times on this blog; see this post, for instance, about high winds in Antarctica, carving musical instruments out of the rocks, or this post, in which huge underground spheres in the south polar glaciers are used as a new kind of cathedral, or even this post, in which settlers on Mars confront seemingly inescapable geo-simulations...
Finally, if you haven't read it yet, don't miss the Archinect interview with David Maisel.And I owe a huge thanks to the Nevada Museum of Art for inviting me up to participate in the first place.
 [Image: The future of the private home: a $475 million, custom Airbus A380; illustration by Bryan Christie for Wired].According to Wired, an "undisclosed billionaire" has paid $475 million for a private Airbus A380 passenger jet. The plane weighs 361 tons, is eight stories tall, and can hold up to 500 passengers – but this nameless billionaire will simply be using it as "one of the most expensive mobile homes in the world" (complete with $150 million in "custom upgrades"). For whatever mysterious reasons of his or her own, the plane's owner has taken to calling the custom airplane "Project Trinity." Which is actually interesting, because I was just thinking the other day that there are no flying churches – at least for mainstream congregations – and I don't think there are any sky mosques. In other words, the architectural history of the Church doesn't, to my knowledge, include any airplanes. Gothic cathedrals, sure – but no StratoPulpit™. No CloudChurches (©). And Islam has no AirMosques®. In fact, this would make an interesting addition to the Pamphlet Architecture series: speculative religious architecture, creatively re-using vehicles from the private air transport industry. In any case, while we're on the subject of extravagant private homes, as everyone in the world heard at least once last week, Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, is constructing himself a private skyscraper in Mumbai.  [Image: Mukesh Ambani's 60-story house; via the Mumbai Mirror].Ambani's new home will be "over 170m tall," the BBC reported, and it will require "an army of 600 staff to manage it." All said, the tower will cost as much as $1 billion to construct (or 1/20th of Ambani's reported wealth). According to the Mumbai Mirror, the house has been named "Residence Antilia." The Mirror goes on to explain that Antilia is "a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean far to the west of Spain. This mythical island had several other names such as Isle of Seven Cities, Ilha das Sete Cidades (Portuguese), Septe Cidades, Sanbrandan (or St Brendan), etc." Some people say Antilia is actually Manhattan; others say it's one of the Canary Islands; and yet others say it would make an awesome summer project for architectural design studios: design Antilia, an artificial island – or series of islands – "far to the west of Spain." Briefly, then, Residence Antilia will include: • space for 168 "imported" cars, divided across six floors
• an entire floor for "car maintenance," with an "in-house service centre"
• an "entertainment floor"
• terraces, balconies, and roof gardens
• a "health" floor, including "the latest gym equipment" and a pool
• three helipads
• two basement levels Etc. etc. The expenditure is appalling, and the obvious contrast to the poverty of everyday Mumbai is almost literally unbelievable; and yet I have a soft spot for weird architectural projects built by really rich people – and a private skyscraper would make such a fantastic setting for a novel or film, not to mention a wild place to be left alone for the weekend, that I have to be honest and admit that I find this project pretty interesting. Is it well-designed (by architects Perkins + Will)? It's too hard to tell from these images. Is it socially just? Of course not. But it's an awesome addition to the growing pantheon of extreme private homes – and the narrative implications that it presents for future Ballardian artworks (novels, films, videogames) are, for me, stunning. At the very least: a Bollywood Home Alone. (Vaguely related: $5.4 billion).
 [Image: Iceland's Vatnajökull glacier].The Guardian tells us today about a "unique work of art" that "invites viewers to phone a glacier in Iceland – and listen to its death throes, live, through a microphone submerged deep in the bitterly cold lagoon." The weatherproof microphone thus "relays the splashes, creaks and groans as great masses of melting ice sheer off and crash into the water."  [Image: Iceland's Vatnajökull glacier].You just have to call the following number: +44 (0) 7758 225698 (a British mobile phone – non-Brits, beware huge long-distance fees!) to "make direct contact with the polar icecap." However, the article warns us: "Only one caller at a time can get through: [artist Katie] Paterson recommends the small hours of the morning." So, if you're extremely rich and cursed with insomnia, you can always lull yourself to sleep, sitting up at 3am near the kitchen window with your telephone pressed hard against your ear, listening to the groan of distant glaciers... I tried to get through a few hours ago, but dialed the wrong number – connecting instead to the subterranean roar of Mt. Hood. Perhaps there should be a telephone directory for natural phenomena. (Thanks, Alex! Earlier on BLDGBLOG: To eavesdrop on breaking glaciers from within and When landscapes sing: or, London Instrument).
 [Image: The blogger open house at Postopolis! Photo by Susan Surface].I can't stop thinking about Postopolis! – now that I'm back on the west coast, it's like it may not have really occurred... I also just like the image, above – taken by Susan Surface – so I thought I'd put up another quick link about one of the events at Postopolis! So: in the above image you're looking at the blogger open house, from Saturday, June 2, at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. From left to right you see: Miss Representation, Chad Smith, Enrique Ramirez, Abe Burmeister, me (looking down at a laptop), John Hill, Alec Appelbaum (standing in back), George Agnew (holding microphone), and Ryan McClain. First of all, thanks to all of them for coming out. Second, I thought it was a great conversation – and a lot of fun. We obviously talked about blogging, but we went on to discuss architecture, self-publishing, anonymity, women in the age of Web 2.0, working with & without an editor, real estate in the city, extra-architectural posts – from Abe's nomad economics to Enrique's ship-salvaging tools – and their popularity on our respective sites, passing through diversions on starchitecture, who all this writing is actually intended for, and the sheer number of architecture blogs – and blogs in general – now kicking around out there in the ethersphere. It was also great to meet some of these guys for the first time – one of the best things about Postopolis! in my opinion was simply that it got everyone together in one place, all of us – separated by keyboards and coffee cups and full-time jobs – coming together at the Storefront finally to reassure ourselves and others that the human experience is still alive and well in the 21st century, that conversations can, in fact, still happen, and we're not all pale, deformed misfits sweating into our desktop computers... In any case, it's always worth clicking through the blogs, linked above – as well as through some of the other blogs who were invited but, for whatever reason, couldn't make it: Curbed, Apartment Therapy, Polis, Brownstoner, Progressive Reactionary, and so on. And expect more updates and recaps when the mood hits.
 [Image: Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson; image via the Daily Mail].In a project that "will astonish the commuters of Liverpool," sculptor Richard Wilson has turned part of a building's facade inside-out. As if learning from Gordon Matta-Clark, Wilson sliced an "egg-shaped section" out of the building's facade – "fixing the eight metre diameter piece on a pivot" so it can spin.  [Image: Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson; image via the Daily Mail].The "rotating facade" will thus "reveal a glimpse of the interior" – for the low, low price of £450,000. (Thanks, Nicky!)
 [Image: A glimpse of Chizhevsky Lessons by Micol Assaël; image courtesy of ArtForum].Named after a Russian scientist "who explored the correlation between solar activity and historical events," Chizhevsky Lessons is an art installation in Basel, Switzerland, by Micol Assaël. The gallery it's displayed in looks a bit like an empty room. You do see a series of copper plates hanging above you in space, and there's a triangle, attached to wires, hovering alone in the center, like a Modernist chandelier. But aside from those somewhat occultish pieces of interior decor, the place looks perfectly normal. Still, it doesn't feel right: Upon entering, one first senses a disquieting buzz sound, followed by a tickling of the skin as one’s body hair stands on end. It’s the loaded atmosphere that precedes a thunderstorm, but re-created artificially with a cascade generator, a transformer, copper plates, and, hung three meters above the floor, a thin wire net that fills the room with negatively charged ions. One cannot help but experience an immediate physical reaction... Sure, it's basically just a huge science experiment – but I can't stop myself wondering what a slightly less powerful, much more well-hidden model could do for you. If you installed it in, say, a corporate board room: the CEO looks down upon her minions with derision and rage – because they didn't finish the monthly report. As she speaks they hear a disquieting buzzing sound, followed by a tickling of the skin as one's body hair stands on end... It'd be like the Greek myths, reenacted through 21st century technology. The divine encounter: install six of these in St. Peter's. Or, for that matter, install one, secretly, in your bedroom – and wait for the sparks to fly. (Thanks again to Dan Polsby!)
 [Image: The Brooklyn sludge slowly surfaces... Photo by Jeff Riedel for New York Magazine].The largest oil spill in American history is apparently: 1) in New York City, 2) nearly a century old, and 3) beginning to re-surface under Greenpoint, Brooklyn. An article in New York Magazine this week dives head-first into the spill, asking us to "imagine a viscous tar-colored blob stretching amoebalike through the Earth." This viscous blob is really "ten million gallons of toxic gunk trapped in the Brooklyn aquifer," made of "gasoline, solvents, and associated poisons bubbling up from the very ground." These associated poisons include naptha, from which napalm is manufactured. The subterranean Brooklyn blob represents "more than a century’s worth of spills, leaks, and waste dumped by oil companies" – and it's "pooled into a vast underground lake, more than 55 acres wide and up to 25 feet thick." Not only has it infiltrated the region's water supply (don't worry: they pipe water in from the Catskills), but it means you can set the soil on fire.  [Image: A map of the subsurface blob; illustration by Jason Lee, courtesy of New York Magazine].Worse, thousands of people now live on top of it... From the article: No one really knows what the consequences of Greenpoint’s oil spill have been – or will be. It’s like the dust from 9/11, the chemicals dumped at Love Canal, the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, or even global warming. Do we ever really know their costs? Perhaps twenty years from now epidemiological studies will reveal a link between living in Greenpoint and dying of cancer. Though it seems the cancer rate may already be on the rise. In any case, I could go on and on – or you could just read the whole article. It's not a life-changing read – and it's conclusion is strangely anticlimactic – but the very idea of a black tarry blob drifting beneath the streets of New York is far too awesome to resist. (Thanks to Dan Polsby for the tip!)
 [Image: A glimpse of London's LightHive, by Alex Haw, on display last week].An installation called the LightHive closed last week at the Architectural Association in London. Designed by architect, actor, theorist, and writer Alex Haw, the hive functioned as a new form of " luminous architectural surveillance," somewhere between sculpture, optical device, and high-end interior decoration – an immersive chandelier, if you will. According to the UK-based ArtsHub, Haw's LightHive "pushes CCTV into another dimension."  [Image: Preliminary point-cloud study for the LightHive, executed by Marc Fornes].Specifically, the hive consists of "a surveillance network" – connected to nearly 7.5km of LED wiring – that "records the movement of people through the building" (where "the building" is London's Architectural Association in Bedford Square). The LightHive then "transmutes the energy into bursts of light, which create an 'immersive form of 3d CCTV'."    [Images: Glimpses of the LightHive, an indoor constellation aware of those who view it. Image one, two, and three – and a lot more here].From a description of the exhibition: The space thus operates like a 3D X-ray of the building’s activity, a kind of constantly updating surround-light CCTV, a spatial model of the entire School’s performance fluctuating over the course of hours, days and weeks. I'll admit to being a tad unclear about how the ensuing displays of light manage to represent – or not – the presence of human beings; but I love the idea.   [Images: The LightHive as digital model (by Marc Fornes) and material execution].I love just thinking about the possibility that, say, all the lights in Bloomsbury, from desk lamps and bathroom fixtures to fluorscent bulbs at the nearest Pret a Manger, might someday act as a huge sensory mechanism, responding and dimming in response to the passage of people in the streets. Or parts of Tokyo light up, LightHive-like, illustrating in real-time the level of pedestrian traffic down the King's Road (or 5th Avenue, or Kastanienallee). Or install one of these things in the International Space Station, to register human movement through the back rooms of Mission Control, far below... Anti-gravitational light sculptures in space.   [Images: 7.5km of LED wiring plus "a last view of the lush multicoloured universe of RS232 DMX cables" required for the LightHive].In any case, this would not be the first time Haw has explored the artistic application of surveillance technology. His 2005 film CCLTV, for instance, took a long look at "the astonishing density of CCTV positions along the Euston Road" in London; and Haw wrote an article for AA Files a few years back on the increasingly Panoptic use of surveillance cameras in the greater London area.  [Image: From CCLTV, a film that exposes "the astonishing density of CCTV positions along the Euston Road"; directed by Alex Haw].Loads of more info – including some technical specifics – about the LightHive can be found over on Marc Fornes's site. And if you managed to see the hive itself in action last week, let me know how it was... (Thanks to Alex Haw for the tip).
 As if tapping into a rival spiritual tradition, Pope Benedict XVI will soon become "the first pontiff to harness solar power to provide energy for the Vatican," according to the BBC. "The deteriorating cement roof tiles of the Paul VI auditorium will be replaced next year with photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity." The BBC's all too short news item goes on to report that the Vatican "is considering placing solar panels on other buildings although St Peter's Basilica and other historical landmarks will not be touched." But why not touch them? Solar-powered cathedrals lining the bombed-out fields of Europe! How much more spiritually energizing can you get than plugging directly into that ongoing hydro-helium reaction in space? Teaching theology by the contained light of solar flares – astral disasters captured flashing, as power surges down consecrated halls of painted saints. Frescoes gleam. Christianity meets Mithraism in architectural form. John 8:12 – I am the Light of the World – taken literally. In fact, the whole book of John is arguably about the solar power industry.  In any case, are solar panels the new stained glass windows? And might Christianity be subtly transformed by this encounter with the celestial realm? Apollonian light burning where there once were candles? After all, Christianity has been turning its doctrinal face away from the stars for far too long.  Imagine this heaving, propulsive thing lighting up cathedrals and prayer books! Shining in libraries and guiding pilgrims through churches, casting shadows in the courtyards of monks. Christendom should have been solar-powered all along – installing astronomical monstrosity at the very heart of the Catechism. Seriously, though, do the metaphoric implications of the Vatican going solar outweigh any sort of practical message we might otherwise gain from this bit of news? Isn't solar power a major doctrinal shift for contemporary Christianity? Can everyday technology truly embody religious ideals? (Earlier on BLDGBLOG: In space, no one can hear you pray and The Heliocentric Pantheon: An Interview with Walter Murch).
 [Image: The Postopolis! closing party kicks off; photo by John Hill of Archidose].
Well, I'm back in Los Angeles, after one of the longest and most surreal days of my life, flying nearly sleepless across mountains and canyonlands mere hours after saying goodbye to everyone at the Storefront, leaving New York before the music had ended, as the print-outs of our blogs were literally blowing off the walls and whole tubs' worth of ice – emptied of at least three hundred beer bottles within minutes – melted into rivers across the sidewalk, and before it even seemed possible that Postopolis! had really come to an end – but there it was: the whole thing was over, already something from yesterday, and now last week, and so I'm in Los Angeles again with no real proof that it ever happened, except for some bookmarks and some photos and some business cards I picked up along the way and this almost painfully happy nostalgia for every aspect of it, feeling more like a ghost who invisibly revisited the east coast, passing through the neutron star of New York City, Manhattan, a now artificial island so dense with structure that it bends the lives of those around it; but there we all were for a week, hanging out and talking about space, time, and architecture in the sweat and heat together.
   [Images: The Storefront for Art and Architecture; photos, top to bottom, by Nicola Twilley, Dan Hill, and BLDGBLOG].
And it was a blast.
All of which means I'll start posting again here, about Postopolis! itself – and the speakers who came through, and the city, and the people I met, and the weather systems that pass through Manhattan seemingly detached from the planet – and about regular old architectural news, from the private skyscraper of a man in India to the Italian fate of urban rubbish, soon enough.
But I just want to say a huge thanks, first of all, to my fellow Postopolitans: Dan Hill of City of Sound, Jill Fehrenbacher of Inhabitat, and Bryan Finoki of Subtopia – I already miss you! How strange to spend nearly nine hours a day with someone, for an entire week, only to leap onto an airplane... and wonder if you'll ever see them again.
All the more reason to host Postopolis! 2 next year.
  [Images: (top) Jill Fehrenbacher and Dan Hill watch one of the speakers; (bottom) Bryan Finoki cools off by a fan. Photos by Nicola Twilley].
But I also owe a huge thanks to the staff of the Storefront for being there, and for setting up the place, and for slapping our logos onto the facade, and for finding us all a place to stay (more about our hotel soon – specifically the plumbing).
To my wife for the help, for the photos, and for putting up with my jangly nerves.
To everyone who attended – the audience was at least half the point of putting this thing together, and your questions, comments, complaints, flashing photo bulbs, and laughter were a huge inspiration.
To DJ /rupture and N-RON for vibrating all of southern Manhattan Saturday night with giant triangular slabs of bass blasting out and downward from the Storefront on Kenmare Street.
To all our speakers, for coming out in 1000% humidity to deliver un-air-conditioned speeches through sometimes squealing microphones as dumptrucks rattled by blowing air horns – the event would literally have been nothing without your participation! It was also great to meet so many people with whom I've been in email contact for months, if not years, and to realize that all those people out there on the internet, sending you things, are real: you can shake their hand, and have a glass of wine with them, and laugh.
And, of course, most of all, I owe a gigantic thanks to Joseph Grima, Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, who came up with the idea for Postopolis! in the first place; who invited me and everyone else out there to New York City to attend; who made all the ends meet administratively, spatially, technically, and financially; and who put up with the goofy, adolescent nervousness I know at least I personally experienced several times each day.
  [Images: (top) Joseph Grima peers out through the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture (photo by Nicola Twilley); (bottom) Joseph Grima, photographed by Dan Hill].
Thank you, Joseph!
Finally, thanks to the BLDGBLOG readers who didn't really care about Postopolis! and who don't live anywhere near Manhattan, yet who sat through all these more or less content-less updates while the event spun on. Regular posts will continue shortly.
More soon – but, seriously, thanks again to everybody involved with Postopolis!
I had a sleepless and amazing time, and I already miss everything.
But now I'm home.
 [Image: Looking down at the desert of greater Los Angeles, with Postopolis! already far too far behind us; photo by Nicola Twilley].
(PS: If you're looking for more photos and some video feeds of the event, don't miss all the stuff up on YouTube or BLDGBLOG's Postopolis! Flickr set and the public Postopolis! Flickr pool).
 [Image: Bryan Finoki talks to Michael Kubo, North American editor of Actar books, through an opening in the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture... Photo by Nicola Twilley].After having an entire post deleted this morning by Blogger, I only have time to get today's schedule up before the day really begins. In any case, it's already 1:30 on the last day of Postopolis!, and my logo on the front of the building now says BLDG B OG, turning me into an ad for toilets – but hey. City of Sound is now City f Sound... And so on. A bit of news, meanwhile: Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina, scheduled for appearances today, have both inconveniently relocated themselves at the last minute to Lisbon and Montreal, so we'll have to try to rope together some kind of phone interview with them. Which means the schedule looks like this: 2:00pm: Live telephone interviews with Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina3:30pm: Keller Easterling4:15pm: Randi Greenberg answers questions about Metropolis magazine, online journalism, and architecture blogs 4:40pm: A group discussion about Archinect school blogs with Archinect school bloggers – turning into a converation about Archinect itself with some Archinect editors5:15pm: Blogger open house with George Agnew, Alec Appelbaum, Abe Burmeister, John Hill, Ryan McClain, Miss Representation, Enrique Ramirez, Chad Smith, and others to be announced 7:30pm: Closing party with lots of free booze and some live sets by DJ /rupture and N-RONMore soon!
 [Image: Standing outside the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Photo by City of Sound].It's that time of day again: I'm on my way south across the island, heading down to the Storefront for Art and Architecture, for Day 4 of Postopolis! Dan Hill has continued his coverage of the event, so if you're looking for regular updates – as opposed to my half-efforts here, full of nothing – I'd urge you all to go check out City of Sound. There's also a Postopolis! Flickr pool, if you're looking for some images of the proceedings – and I promise to start posting normal BLDGBLOG content as soon as possible (and I apologize to readers who are tired of these meager asides!).  [Image: DJ /rupture, speaking yesterday at the Storefront; in some late-breaking but huge news, /rup will be spinning the Postopolis! closing party, Saturday night! Photo by Nicola Twilley].Meanwhile, here's today's schedule: 1:30pm: Julia Solis2:10pm: Andrew Blum3:00pm: William Drenttel, Tom Vanderbilt, and Michael Bierut 4:10pm: James Sanders4:50pm: David Benjamin & Soo-in Yang5:30pm: Kevin Slavin6:10pm: Eric Rodenbeck6:50pm: Laura Kurgan7:30pm: Lawrence WeschlerHope to see you there! And don't forget the Saturday night closing party, with live sets by DJ / rupture and N-RON.
 [Image: Looking through the porous facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture].We're into day three of Postopolis! now. If you want to learn more about what exactly it is that's going on here, Dan Hill, over at City of Sound, has been doing a bang up job keeping track of all the speakers, offering his summaries of – and commentary on – their talks. Given time over the next few days, I'll try to do my own quick version of this; there's been some fantastic stuff so far – and I think we've sorted out most of the technical issues, so there's less to worry about, and, hopefully, more time to blog. In any case, the schedule today looks like...: 1:30pm: DJ /rupture2:50pm: Gianluigi Ricuperati3:30pm: Monica Hernandez4:10pm: Jeff Byles4:50pm: Wes Janz5:30pm: Lebbeus Woods6:10pm: Robert Neuwirth6:50pm: Jake Barton7:30pm: Joel Sanders [Image: Dan Hill, live-blogging Postopolis!].So come on down. And don't miss the slowly growing Postopolis! Flickr pool for some images of the event. More soon. (Photos by Nicola Twilley).
 [Image: Dan Hill and Bryan Finoki sit inside the Storefront for Art and Architecture].Well, day one of Postopolis! is now history – and it was a blast. We had some phenomenal presentations, from Robert Krulwich, Tobias Frere-Jones, and Stanley Greenberg; we heard from Michael Kubo, of Actar, about architectural book publishing; we managed our way through a pecha kucha featuring this blog, City of Sound, Inhabitat, and Subtopia; we drank beer; and I thought the whole thing was great.  [Image: Bryan Finoki, Jill Fehrenbacher, and Joseph Grima at the Storefront for Art and Architecture; unlike Jill and Joseph, Bryan is actually watching a baseball game...].There are some problems with audio, on the other hand, which means that a great deal of the evening's visitors didn't actually hear anything... but we'll work on that. (If you did come out and heard nothing, I apologize!) Meanwhile, City of Sound has just posted some great action shots from the day, including a live-blogged summary of Robert Krulwich's presentation; and I've got a small Flickr set forming, and there is a Postopolis! Flickr group taking shape, as well. Today, meanwhile, Wednesday, May 30, you'll be hearing from: 1:30pm: Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch2:10pm: Matthew Clark4:00pm: Panel on sustainable design with Susan Szenasy, Allan Chochinov, Graham Hill, and Jill Fehrenbacher (moderated by Jill) 5:30pm: Scott Marble6:10pm: Paul Seletsky6:50pm: Ada Tolla & Giuseppe Lignano7:30pm: Michael Sorkin & Mitchell JoachimSo please come out! And say hello. Be advised, meanwhile, that Michael Sorkin might not be able to attend; we'll only know when the time comes round.   [Images: (top) Jill Fehrenbacher and Bryan Finoki watch either Geoff Manaugh or Dan Hill give a presentation; (bottom) Bryan Finoki, Joseph Grima, Geoff Manaugh, and Dan Hill set up for the day, inside the Storefront for Art and Architecture].And I'll keep updating everyone as the week goes on – but, for those not in NYC or who frankly don't care about Postopolis!, I'll hopefully have at least one or two new posts in the forthcoming days. (Photos by Nicola Twilley).
 [Image: The Postopolis! crew: (l-r) Joseph Grima, Jill Fehrenbacher, Geoff Manaugh, Bryan Finoki, Dan Hill, and Gaia Cambiaggi (photo by Nicola Twilley)].The doors of Postopolis! burst open tomorrow. First up, at 3:00pm: Robert Krulwich3:40pm: Tobias Frere-Jones 5:00pm: Stanley Greenberg5:45pm: Michael Kubo, North American editor for Actar, discusses books, blogs, and the future of architectural publishing with Kevin Lippert, founder of Princeton Architectural Press6:45pm: Joseph Grima, Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, introduces BLDGBLOG, City of Sound, Inhabitat, and City of Sound, who will talk about their blogs and then lead a pecha kucha So if you're in NYC, please stop by...! And there's a lot more news coming soon.
Among many other interestings things to read in Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition by Jeff Byles – who will be speaking at Postopolis! on Thursday afternoon – is the fact that part of Manhattan is actually constructed from British war ruins.
 [Image: Winston Churchill visits the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, 1942; courtesy of the Library of Congress].
Toward the end of the book, Byles describes how "[m]ore than 16 million people saw their homes wrecked by bomb destruction during World War II, with more than 4.5 million housing units completely toasted."
Further, "[w]ith London and Coventy knee-deep in rubble by the fall of 1940, a phalanx of 13,500 troops from the Royal Engineers got busy ripping down war-ravaged structures."
But what to do with all that rubble...? Byles: Around that same time, New York's FDR Drive was being constructed, which ran along the east side of Manhattan. "Much of the landfill on which it is constructed consists of the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Second World War by the Luftwaffe's blitz on London and Bristol," the historian Kenneth T. Jackson wrote. "Convoys of ships returning from Great Britain carried the broken masonry in their holds as ballast." When you're driving around on the FDR, in other words – or, for that matter, when you're simply looking out over the east side of Manhattan – you and your gaze are passing over fragments of British cathedrals and London housing stock, flagstones quarried from Yorkshire, the shattered doorframes and lintels – and eaves, and vaults, and partition walls, and bedroom floors – of whole towns, pieces of Slough and Swindon perhaps, embedded now in asphalt, constituting what would otherwise have passed for bedrock.
Down in the foundations of the city are other cities.
(Elsewhere: We learn that the British coast has become geologically French, further complicated our future sense of geological belonging – raising the interesting possibility that one can exist in a state of geological alienation... Psychoanalysts will have a field day. [via]).
I'm still reeling from the announcement of Postopolis! – but the good news keeps on coming.  To make a long story still rather long... Back in January, Alan Rapp, the art, design, and photography editor for Chronicle Books, attended a BLDGBLOG event hosted by the Center for Land Use Interpretation here in Los Angeles. Alan and I met, kept in touch, had a pizza, talked about David Cronenberg; and then, last month, we organized an event together in San Francisco. Somewhere in there the idea of a BLDGBLOG book came up – which I soon turned into a formal proposal... and now it's official: Chronicle Books will be publishing a BLDGBLOG book in Spring 2009 – and my head is spinning! BLDGBLOG: The Book! The BLDGBLOG Book!I just can't even believe how many possibilities there are with this thing. It's a little crazy. In a nutshell, though, it'll be divided up into three major sections – Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, and Landscape Futures – covering everything I've already covered here and more... From plate tectonics and J.G. Ballard to geomagnetic harddrives and undiscovered Manhattan bedrooms, via offshore oil derricks, airborne utopias, wind power, fossil cities, statue disease, inflatable cathedrals, diamond mines, science fiction and the city, pedestrianization schemes, the architecture of the near-death experience, Scottish archaeology, wreck-diving, green roofs, W.G. Sebald, flooded Londons of the climate-changed future, William Burroughs, Andrew Maynard, LOT-EK, Rupert Thomson, The Aeneid, shipbreaking yards, Die Hard, Pruned, Franz Kafka, Rem Koolhaas, tunnels and sewers and bunkers and tombs, micronations, underground desert topologies, Mars, Earth, lunar urbanism, sound mirrors, James Bond, the War on Terror, earthquakes, Angkor Wat, robot-buildings and the Taj Mahal, Archigram, the Atlas Mountains, refugee camps, Walter Murch, suburbia, the Maunsell Towers... and about nine hundred thousand other topics, provided I can fit them all in. There will be interviews, essays, quotations, photos, original artwork – and hopefully even a graphic novel, strung throughout the book. And it will be well-designed and affordable! And it will put all existing architecture books to shame. Every single one of them. Except maybe a few... And, importantly, even if there's someone out there who's read every single post on this site – I know I haven't – they'll still find loads of new material.  Further, since I'll more or less be writing this thing over the next six months, I'd love it – love it! – if BLDGBLOG readers wanted to make suggestions, or send me links, or leave comments, or tell me what to avoid... In fact, half the joy of writing BLDGBLOG has always been the comments, so I hope I can even figure out a way to include the best of them in the book somehow, either chasing down anonymous readers for permission or... something, I don't know, but the whole point is to be open to everyone's input and ideas. A BLDGBLOG book Flickr pool, perhaps... Or a design contest... A questionnaire... What's your favorite bus stop in the world and why? Who knows – but this should be an absolute blast – and I'll make sure that the book is actually worth picking up. You won't just get a bunch of crap you've already read, reprinted word-for-word from the blog, served back to you for $30 (or $20, or $25...). But, man, I don't even know how many blogs make the leap into book-form! So I'm also nervous. But excited. And a little delirious with possibilities. Hoping that I do it right. So look out for BLDGBLOG: The Book, or The BLDGBLOG Book, or whatever it will eventually be be called, coming soon to a Borders near you. Spring 2009. Chronicle Books. In a deal that never would have happened had it not been for Alan Rapp. And, of course, without so many hundreds – and hundreds – of people out there, who went out of their way to help BLDGBLOG find an audience – or who just did or wrote or built or made or said something cool, thus supplying me with material – I might never have started blogging at all. So I don't want to jump into some kind of Academy Award acceptance speech here, but I really do have to say thanks to dozens and dozens and dozens of people, including, but in no way limited to – hold your breath: my wife, for editing almost literally every single post I've written on this thing and making everything, universally, on all levels, better; Javier Arbona, Bryan Finoki, John Jourden, and Paul Petrunia, in particular, of Archinect for the early break, as well as the entire Archinect crew for putting up with me there; Alex Trevi at Pruned; Marcus Trimble of gravestmor; Simon Sellars at Ballardian; Sarah Rich and Jill Fehrenbacher; Jonathan Bell of things magazine; David Maisel; Cory Doctorow, Jason Kottke, William Drenttel, Jim Coudal, Bruce Sterling, Steve Silberman, Robert Krulwich, Lawrence Weschler, Douglas Coupland, Warren Ellis; The Kircher Society; all the people I've interviewed; all the people who have participated in BLDGBLOG events; all the commenters out there, both regular and one-time only, including people who have disappeared (or who no longer leave comments – I miss you!); all the people who have sent me tips; Christopher Stack; Dan Polsby; friends of mine who were part of BLDGBLOG at the very, very beginning, before it even had a logo, including Jim Webb, Cathy Braasch Dean, Neena Verma, and Juliette Spertus; David Haskell of the Forum for Urban Design; William Fox; Ruairi Glynn, Abe Burmeister, Dan Hill, Régine Debatty, Chris Timmerman, Chad Smith, Dave Connell, John Hill, Jaime Morrison, Andrew Blum; Scott Webel; Matthew Coolidge, Sarah Simons, and Steve Rowell of the Center for Land Use Interpretation; Materials & Applications; Leah Beeferman; John Coulthart; Theo Paijmans; my del.icio.us network for linking to so many interesting things; Joerg Colberg; Siologen, Dsankt, and Michael Cook; Theresa Duncan; Curbed LA and SF; Jörg Koch; Steven Ceuppens; Yahoo!, Time Magazine, MSNBC, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Architectural Review, Mark Magazine, Artkrush, Planetizen; Thomas Y. Levin and Annette Fierro, for letting me sit-in on their classes, free, way back in 2004, leading directly to the birth of this blog; my family (including in-laws!); Blogger; and about ninety-nine million other people, things, places, friends, writers, editors, architects, and on and on and on. BLDGBLOG would have folded up and disappeared long ago were it not for the encouragement of people who it would take me literally the next two days to thank completely. So thanks – again – especially to Alan Rapp and to Chronicle Books. Meanwhile, expect to hear more about all this as I set about actually writing it... And I'll hopefully see some of you in New York City next week for Postopolis!(Note: I'll add more links and such in a little bit – including the names of people who I'll realize, with horror, that I forgot to mention).
Well, I'm off for New York City this weekend for Postopolis! – but there's a whole lot of news to announce in the meantime, including some new speakers and a relatively up-to-date schedule.  So... Since I last posted about this thing, we've added Keller Easterling, author of Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades, in which you can read about Indonesian piracy, POW camps, hydroponic tomato farms, special economic zones, golf courses, Hindu temples, offshore wind farms, cruise ships, and other "spatial formats" of global capitalism; Jeff Byles, author of Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition, where we learn about "the peculiar sounds of failure" as buildings collapse, architecture turning to dust with the help of high explosives (it's a great book!); Beatriz Colomina, author of Domesticity at War, where she suggests that "postwar American architecture adapted the techniques and materials that were developed for military applications," turning domesticity into a kind of spatial appropriation of warfare; Monica Hernandez, who'll be coming in from Lifeform, a NY-based architecture firm whose work focuses on "green building, including material innovations, new technologies, and waste management issues"; Michael Kubo, the North American editor of Actar, who will be discussing blogs, books, online media, and the future of architectural publishing; Matthew Clark, an engineer at Arup; Tobias Frere-Jones, an internationally renowned typographer, discussing typography, signs, and the city; and several others, yet to be announced. We've even printed a bookmark – so you'll be saving your place in architectural texts with Postopolis! for years to come. The official schedule, meanwhile, subject to one or two last-minute changes, looks like this: 3:00pm: Robert Krulwich3:40pm: Tobias Frere-Jones5:00pm: Stanley Greenberg5:40pm: Michael Kubo6:30pm: Joseph Grima, Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, introduces BLDGBLOG, City of Sound, Inhabitat, and Subtopia, who will talk about their blogs, tell bad jokes, sweat through their clothes out of nervousness, then lead a pecha kucha, free and open to the public 1:30pm: Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch2:10pm: Matthew Clark4:00pm: Panel on sustainable design with Susan Szenasy, Allan Chochinov, Jill Fehrenbacher, and others to be announced 5:30pm: Scott Marble6:10pm: Paul Seletsky6:50pm: Ada Tolla & Giuseppe Lignano7:30pm: Michael Sorkin & Mitchell Joachim1:30pm: DJ /rupture2:50pm: Gianluigi Ricuperati3:30pm: Monica Hernandez4:10pm: Jeff Byles4:50pm: Wes Janz5:30pm: Lebbeus Woods6:10pm: Robert Neuwirth6:50pm: Jake Barton7:30pm: Joel Sanders1:30pm: Julia Solis2:10pm: Andrew Blum3:00pm: William Drenttel, Tom Vanderbilt, and Michael Bierut 4:10pm: James Sanders4:50pm: David Benjamin & Soo-in Yang5:30pm: Kevin Slavin6:10pm: Eric Rodenbeck6:50pm: Laura Kurgan7:30pm: Lawrence Weschler1:30pm: Conversations with Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina3:30pm: Keller Easterling4:15pm: Randi Greenberg5:00pm: Blogger open house with George Agnew, Alec Appelbaum, Abe Burmeister, John Hill, Miss Representation, Aaron Plewke, Enrique Ramirez, Quilian Riano, Chad Smith, and others to be announced 7:30pm: closing party with food, spilt drinks, and music, open to everyone  [Image: What the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture will look like if we get to plaster it with our logos... View larger].Hopefully posts will continue to appear throughout the week – but if you're anywhere near New York in the next ten days, please come by, say hello, ask questions, stare at Bryan Finoki, use the restroom, become obsessed with architecture, give us hell for not having a single novelist in the line-up (we tried), and so on. Here's a map.
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