(New) Babylon Reloaded: February 2011

27 February 2011

Insulation II

After the post about Tropical Islands featuring a gigantic, encapsulated amusement park, a smaller-scale "insulation" example: Haus-Rucker-Co was an Austrian group of architects and artists known for their use of inflatables in temporary installations and projects. Shown in this video, the '68 Gelbes Haus (yellow house) was a pneumatic structure for two people elevated from the ground, while in '71 with Ausstellung Cover (exhibition cover), the group covered the Haus Lange in Krefeld, built in '21 by Mies van der Rohe, with a white, pneumatic dome.

Recently, Raumlabor produced the Küchenmonument (kitchen monument), a sort of living-pod which traveled through many German cities in order to host temporary public events like conferences or collective cooking and dining, a mobile public space insulation.

Related posts:
Insulation I

08 February 2011

New Town - 1948

Check out this animation movie about New Towns development in England: sponsored by the Central Office of Information for Ministry of Town and Country Planning, it is a very interesting document that shows how catchy the idea at the time was... In his poppy way, the movie touches though arguments still being debated: which urban form would our protagonist, Charley, propose today?

The City - 1939

Commissioned for the 1939 New York World's Fair, "The City" is documentary film that celebrates Greenbelt, Maryland, a New Deal development project, both a reaction to industrial urbanity (overcrowded and filthy) and to sprawl (unregulated and unplanned). Lewis Mumford, who wrote the comments for the film, after showing an idyllic pre-industrial America, brings us to the chaotic, polluted and dangerous industrial city, before explaining his counter-proposal: settlements close to nature with plenty of green space, near to railway lines and highways, where low and middle density buildings are grouped around public functions and work place is reached by foot. If we discard the over simplistic tone that the film required, it is still worth watching, considering that it was shot in '39. The music score by Aaron Copland is just beautiful.