(New) Babylon Reloaded

Coney Island

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:27:00 +0000

For those of you who enjoyed Rem Koolhaas' depiction of Coney Island in Delirious New York, here you find the amusement in black and white (1940s).

Car-, kitchen-, house-of-the-future

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:28:00 +0000

1956. How does the future look like? I just realized that, in the same year (a coincidence?), two great previsions about the future of mankind were produced, namely a short musical titled Design for Dreaming and the Smithsons' House of the Future.

On the occasion of the 1956 General Motors Motorama, held in New York and other four American cities, new car prototypes (by Corvette, Cadillac, Pontiac etc.) and a high-tech, automatic kitchen were featured in an odd musical. The dancer Tad Tadlock wants to escape from her bored life and is able to join a mysterious and handsome masked man, who takes her to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to see the show. After having a look at the car models on display, she returns home to her kitchen of the future and bakes a cake, before rejoining her man on a drive on the "road of tomorrow". The film is as odd as funny, with a couple of memorable quotes, and I couldn't resist doing some comparisons with nowaday's China:

Man: "Girls don't go to motoramas, dressed in a pair of pink pajamas!" It is far too easy to imagine some people you meet in the older quarters in Shanghai dressed in their pajamas going to a car show!

Woman: "I'm a girl who happens to think that a brand new car is better than a mink." In a Chinese dating game show in 2010, a 22-year-old girl named Ma Nuo stated: "I'd rather sit and cry in the back of a BMW" than laughing on a bike!

Coming now to somehow less pop territories, in the very same year, Alison and Peter Smithson built their House of the Future, at the Ideal Home Show, a "one-bedroom townhouse with garden", made mainly of plastic with radiant heating in the floors, full of electronic gadgets.

Image via worksdifferent.wordpress.com

Photo by John McCann

View from patio to kitchen. Photo by John McCann

Dressing room. Photo by Daily Mail

View across living room. Photo by John R. Pantlin

Differences & similarities

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:46:00 +0000

How much has China changed in 70 years? And how much has it changed in the eyes of foreigners? Enjoy contemporary Chinese streets in the first video (by Ricardo Mendialdua), and then have a look at a 1940 depiction of everyday life in Chengdu, capital of southwest Sichuan province ("People of western China"). What is interesting, is that both videos portray, on one hand the persistent "chinese-ness" of China, and on the other the big impacts of modernization, foreign technologies and influence.

About Batman and other Chinese characters

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:08:00 +0000

"Lonely Planed Mandarin Phrasebook". Image via amazon.com

If you think about China, what comes first to your mind? Which icons represent the Country in our western collective imagination? The "Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook" summarizes our idea of "Chineseness"with: a rickshaw, a bike, taijiquan, the Forbidden City and... Rem Koolhaas' CCTV headquarters. The CCTV building (blessed by fire in 2009) can be considered iconic architecture in one of its purest forms.

Skyscraper-bulimia. Shcreenshot from a R. Koolhaas' presentation.

Skyscraper-pastiche in the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. Image by jesabele

In fact, China (not differently from Dubai) seems now very fond of iconic buildings, collecting patchwork- or collage-skylines. As one can easily imagine, the results are often both interesting and dreadful. In Shanghai some examples of this skyscraper-bulimia can be: "the Batman", "the Chinese pot", "the bottle-opener" and "the upside-down duck" (a sort of Venturian reinterpretation).

"The Batman". Image by Ol.v!er [H2vPk]

"The Chinese pot". Image by iferneinez

"The bottleopener". Image by HBarrison

"The upside-down" duck. Image by Augapfel

The "venturian" big duck. Via wikipedia.org

Fixed'n'floating

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:37:00 +0000

Here a recent project at Tongji University in collaboration with Zheng Wentao. The urban design proposal deals with aging society issues and is located in Chuansha New Town, at the outskirts of Shanghai.

Fixed'n'floating

On "quotation" and "translation"

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 17:01:00 +0000

New Academy of Art, first phase, Ningbo.

During some recent trips to Hangzhou and to Ningbo I had the opportunity to experience Wang Shu's architecture in closer detail (Ningbo Museum of Art, Ningbo Historic Museum, New Academy of Art among others). Wang Shu is known for his contextual approach, especially regarding local materials and culture. From What impressed me is the fact that he sometimes "quotes" building techniques, other times he seems to "translate" them.

Ningbo Historic Museum. Facade's cladding.

One might wonder how he came to the decision to clad the Ningbo Historic Museum with used bricks and tiles of various kinds. In fact, in many villages and towns like Cicheng, some 10km away from Ningbo, you can see how locals used diverse materials to build their walls, out of necessity reasons. Of course the main difference between the two uses is that this heterogeneous pattern has originally a structural function, while Wang Shu employs it as cladding.

Informal wall in Cichang.

An example of "translation" might be some openings in the New Academy of Art's second phase development. In one of the teaching building an inner courtyard is separated from the outside by a perforated wall, which openings remind me of some traditional Chinese garden gates, like the ones in Yuyuan in Shanghai.

New Academy of Art, second phase, Hangzhou.

Garden gate in Yuyuan, Shanghai.

Here more high-quality photos.

Biodivers/City

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:34:00 +0000

Here a landscape architecture and urban design project that Eleonore Harmel and I produced last semester at TU Berlin. Theme of the studio was the "productive urban landscape" and we chose biodiversity as a theme for our project site in Köln-Ehrenfeld.

Here high-quality pictures.

Biodivers/city

We were already, already bored

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:54:00 +0000

I am sure you have not missed the last album by Arcade Fire "The suburbs" and the marvelous video by Spike Jonze "Scenes from the suburbs" that follows here:

Does it really represent suburban living? Well, check-out this 2006 Canadian documentary movie about suburbia, "Radiant city": though we know already the ills of suburbia, director Gary Burns and journalist Jim Brown did a good job showing an average middle-class family in its everyday life in "Evergreen" neighborhood. You can get a pretty precise idea about the appeal that suburbia holds, but also about the most common negative externalities and disillusions that people soon have to face. Be patient till the end of the documentary, you will get a surprize!

Shape is part of the meaning

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:57:00 +0000

BVG. Image by haikus

Every Berliner faces them hundreds of times a day, every day... Signboards are part of a city's identity, and in the most fortunate cases they reach the status of collective monuments, like the blue-white-red underground sign in London. Why is it so easy in Berlin to find your way when you travel with public transport? Who is in charge of designing a sing like this one below to show you the right direction? Well, check it out in the following video, where German typographer and designer Erik Spiekermann, who recently won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Design Council, comments some of his work for BVG (Berlin's public transport company) and Die Bahn.

Mtro Potsdamer Platz. Image by Antoon's Footbar

Insulation III

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:53:00 +0000

Shrink by Lawrence Malstaf. Photo by Hanneke Wetzer

Third and last flash-post about insulation: we are at the body-scale. Belgian artist Lawrence Malstaf produced in 1996 a performance called "Shrink", in which visitors were given the opportunity of being wrapped in plastic in a vacuum-pack. In a recent interview the artist explained that the a desire of withdrawal from the world was the feeling that inspired this installation. "Exhibited" people float hung-up in the air completely still, apart from breathing thanks to a rigid tube, the only connection with the surrounding environment. Here follows a "making-of" video...

Related posts:
Insulation II
Insulation I

Insulation II

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 16:02:00 +0000

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

New Town - 1948

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:38:00 +0000

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?

Related posts:
The City - 1939
Transportation System: New York 1940s vs. Beijing 2010s
The Changing City - mid 1960s
Urban Renewal: 1955 vs. 2006

The City - 1939

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:31:00 +0000

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.

Related posts:
Transportation System: New York 1940s vs. Beijing 2010s
The Changing City - mid 1960s
Urban Renewal: 1955 vs. 2006

Insulation I

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:41:00 +0000

Tropical Islands. Image by cocoate.com.

I took inspiration for a small series of posts from some of Peter Sloterdijk's concepts, namely insulation and encapsulation, included in his comprehensive theory of Spherology: in the beginning of a recent interview, Mr. Sloterdijk says:

"We have to speak of space because humans are themselves an effect of the space they create. Human evolution can only be understood if we also bear in mind the mystery of insulation/island-making [Insulierungsgeheimnis] that so defines the emergence of humans: Humans are pets that have domesticated themselves in the incubators of early cultures. All the generations before us were aware that you never camp outside in nature. The camps of man’s ancestors, dating back over a million years, already indicated that they were distancing themselves from their surroundings."

Tropical Island on the left and the closest village on the right. Image from googlemaps.

So, let's go with the first insulation from the surrounding: Tropical Islands is a wellness resort in Brandenburg, 60 km south from Berlin, housed in a former airship hangar. The airship that it was supposed to be host there was never built, the company went bankrupt in 2002 and the structure was bought by a Malaysian Company which turned it into an amusement park, opened in December 2004.
It can contain up to 6000 people in a day and it is the largest hall without supporting pillars in the world. Through a special plastic membrane it is possible to sunbathe inside (UV-proof), swim and spend some days in a tropical forest at 26 degrees (needless to say that the energetic balance of this building is a disaster...).

So far, so good; let's have a look inside...

And the Brandenburger area outside (from a friend of mine, the filmmaker Alessandro Cassigoli)...

65 years and 10.000 km distant...

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:25:00 +0000

Tokyo in 1945 after firebombs. Image from yk.namiki.

Houston, Texas, 2010. Image from bing.com.

Blankenfelde-Mahlow: the butterfly effect

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:32:00 +0000

BBI airport as east European gate.

I post a recent two-weeks-long joint project between TU Berlin, Tsinghua University Beijing and BUCEA University Beijing: together with my colleagues Ella Aminaldin, ZHAO Hǎi Xiǎng, Wáng Wén and Enric Carol Suades, we tackled the problem of noise pollution in Blankenfelde-Mahlow, a small town south from Berlin, which will have to face the close-by expansion of the new BBI airport.

B-M distances to Berlin, Potsdam and BBI airport.

The concept
The so-called "butterfly effect" (i.e. in a complex system, initial small interventions cause relevant effects as time unfolds) was taken as a motto to define our proposal.

Analysis of site
Noise patterns and existing physical and social infrastructure were a starting point: we focused on noise pollution, walking distance to train stations and improvement of public/business services. Growth expectations (10.000 new inhabitants in the near future) and the peculiar suburban life-style framed our work: reevaluating the natural environment would be a good opportunity both for living and experiencing the countryside. There is a potential near the river to enhance the waterside access; the Rangsdorfer forest could be integrated with a new future development, emphasizing thus its relationship with the countryside.

Noise patterns from plane-routes: the darker, the more affected (>60 dB).

Walking distant to train stations: 5 to 15 min.

Inputs
We have to respond to two problems: what to do with the existing buildings under noise threat? Where and how to design new expansions? We propose a strategy in five steps that turns problems into a potential.

Diagram of successive steps.

Proposal
1. Noise protection of existing households via winter-gardens might offer new space, neither interior nor exterior, from the level of single houses to shared winter-gardens for (sub)urban agriculture and leisure, a retrofitting of the dispersed town’s fabric.

Grouping medium-compactness.

Communal winter-garden for low-compactness.

Existing situation.

Renovation proposal.

2. As a consequence to this new situation we transform a former military site into a covered farmer’s market, integrating an elderly house and new businesses dedicated to sport and leisure, since the site lays close to Rangsdorfer lake and forest.

An abandoned military area is converted to elderly houses and farmer's covered market.

3. Reacting to these new functions, a redesign and improvement of the green paths leading to the lake-shore is needed, building a new bridge and resolving the crossing under the A10 highway.

The green "heart".

4. The town is now ready for expansion: we concentrated on the south part of the town, less affected by noise pollution and close to an S-Bahn station, to the new covered-market and lake. Compact typologies assure enough critical mass to have commercial/public services at ground floor: we designed both winter-gardens on the roofs and shared-protected courtyards.

Masterplan 1:2000.

General view.

First typology.

Second typology: gardens on the roof.

5. With enough inhabitants and businesses the town could cover the railway lines, reconnecting its four split parts, and build a station to link directly with BBI airport: a mixture of functions could host hotels and services relating to the airport’s function.

Linear park.

Vision
In conclusion, these strategies aim not only at protecting the current and future inhabitants from noise, but also at improving daily life and providing opportunities for economic growth.

Some high-quality pictures here.

Remdoogo: Fitzcarraldo + Totaltheater

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 15:31:00 +0000

What could it mean to build an Opera-house in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries on earth? Does it make sense at all and what precedents could we find? Klaus Kinski in the movie Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog played the role of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an adventurer and opera-fan who is determined to build an Opera-house in Iquitos, in the middle of the Peruvian Amazonian jungle, and invite the tenor Enrico Caruso to sing there.

Christoph Schlingensief, German film- theater- and opera-director, seems to materialize this idea; he was the initiator of the Operndorf project: an opera-house (Remdoogo) in Laongo, one hour drive from Burkina's capital city Ouagadougou is supposed to help social and infrastructural development through art. Since he was diagnosed lung-cancer (he will die in August 2010), he began thinking about the project. As partner architect he chose Diébédo Francis Kéré, a local architect who currently works (and studied) in Berlin, who received in 2004 the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture, for his school in Gando.

After seeing the effects of a major flooding in August 2009 in Burkina, Schingensief and Kéré thought not only to build an event-house to host different performances, but to develop around it a village, composed most of all of modular housing, which could be built by the residents themselves (a common feature of Kéré's architecture and idea of sustainability and participatory planning). All buildings are designed in such a way to provide natural cross-ventilation and avoid high- and energy-consuming technologies; material is produced locally (loam-bricks) and for roofing additional metal structures are adopted.

For the opera-house a reproduction of Walter Gropius' Totaltheater (designed in 1927 together with the director Erwin Piscator), realized for the Ruhrtriennale and never used was shipped to Burkina: its main feature is the rotating stage, which allows three different settings, from the frontal stage to the central arena-like stage. Its core, in Kéré's modified version, is sheltered by a row of wooden poles, to protect loam-bricks from sun and rain.

W. Gropius' Totaltheater, 1927, with E. Piscator

There beneath the blue suburban skies

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:34:00 +0000

400 mq villas. Photo by IES Global

The annual personal income in the chinese town of Huaxi is roughly 25 times the average earnings in the country, thus being its richest town. Huaxi lies in the province of Guizhou, roughly between Nanjing and Shanghai: founded in 1961 as a rural village it counts nowadays more than 300.00 inhabitants and 80 industries, which started to flourish from mid 1980s onwards, mainly dealing with steel, metal and textile production.

Map of Huaxi: in blue industries

If you decided to live there, you would have, apart from the high monthly income, your own villa (400 mq), car(s), medical insurance and cooking oil. But you would work 7 days a week, marry someone from Huaxi, and if you ever wanted to move, you would lose everything. It is possible to travel, but copies of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Freedom, Arc de Triophe and the Chinese Wall seem to discourage that...

Pagoda-offices. Image by Bert van Dijk

This mix of socialism and capitalism works like this: inhabitants are partners of a holding, the Jiangsu Huaxi Jituan Gonsi, quoted on the stock exchange. The Chinese channel in English CRI realized the following video about Huaxi.

The idyll of American suburban life (more and more popular in the country), apart from being some 50 years late, is paid at a high price by the residents, who by the way seem happy about their life-styles and satisfied with the 2 million tourists visiting the town (pretending city) every year. In the meantime we can see renderings of the new high-rise core by MAD Architects.

Suburban Chinese life. Photo by IES Global

Arc de Triomphe in Huaxi's World Park. Image by Bert van Dijk

Vagabonds abroad: European 1930s travelogue

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 13:59:00 +0000

How does Europe look like in the 1930s to an American couple? Here a home-made film about the European tour of "Bill and I": this travelogue, as Giuliana Bruno might call it, is seen from the perspective of a woman and gives a very good amateurial picture, free from propaganda or commercial intentions.

The recording is titled "Vagabonds abroad. A pictorial narrative of my European travels" and it is clear from the very beginning that we will see the travel-journal of a woman, while the male partner is relegated to a minor role. They head towards Europe (probably from New-York) on March 21st (likely 1936, since we see the Hindenburg Zeppelin flying, later on in the movie).

They visit Lisboa, Gibraltar, Algiers, Palermo, Napoli, Capri, Monaco, Geneva, Wengen, Lucerne, Kölln, Brussels, Wien, Budapest, Salzburg, Münich and Berlin: while the Mediterranean cities hold a typical degree of picturesqueness and well-established sightseeing and panorama views (the bay of Napoli is in this respect paradigmatic), towards the end of the journey and traveling north the written comments rarefy and we have the impression that "Bill and I" are baffled by the Nazi troops marching in front of the Brandenburger Tor.

Pasolini and the shape of cities

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:53:00 +0000

Here two marvelous must-see documentaries by P. P. Pasolini.

Le mura di Sana (The walls of Sana) is a film shot in 1970-71 when Pasolini was in Yemen on the location for his movie Decameron: he addresses it directly to UNESCO, calling for the preservation of the old city of Sana'a, under threat in a period of rapid and aggressive modernization process in the country. In '74 he adds then a sequence with interviews of people about the Italian medieval village of Orte, not far from Rome, which will be the subject of the following documentary.

Pasolini e... la forma della città (Pasolini and... the form of the city) was shot in autumn 1973, sponsored by Italian National TV Company RAI: even if there is some editing by Paolo Brunatto, the film can be easily attributed to Pasolini, who chose to speak about the shape of cities, focusing on Orte and on Sabaudia, one of the five new cities founded by Fascism on the Thyrrenean sea, as part of the national reclaiming program for marshland. Pasolini conceives a "city" referring mainly to its shape and sticking to the idea of a compact, (medieval) core, defined by clear boundaries between built land and nature. With Orte Pasolini can deal with building speculation and its aesthetic consequences; with Sabaudia he addresses Italian '60-'70 socio-cultural changes, comparing them to Fascism.

Plattenbaumuseum

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:54:00 +0000

Renovated Plattenbauten: extra metal-frame balconies in light-blue, existing ones with new blue glass-bricks.

If you can stand a bit of Ostalgie and have a Sunday off, the Plattenbaumuseum in Berlin Hellersdorf is worth the visit: in Hellersdorf, part of GDR, between 1976 and 1986 were built roughly 42.000 prefabricated concrete-slab apartments (Plattenbau), the majority of which consisting of WBS-70 typology. This type was characterized by a modular raster or 6 x 6 mt., a depth of 12 mt., floor height of 2.80 mt. usually rising till the 5th, 6th or 11th floor. A building with 30 apartments could be built in 4 weeks, 18 hours per apartment. In a WBS-70 could live a couple with one or two children, or a couple with no children who needed an extra working-room.

General WBS-70 plan.

Kitchen: note the all-present wallpaper.

Bedroom.

The company in charge of the renovation wanted to show how the original situation was, compared to the "new" apartments: in fact you can also visit the very next renovated apartment and see the difference. Getting rid of a partition wall and of wallpaper, reducing the rooms from three to two, adding an extra balcony, external insulation and increased care of the green spaces are quite easy moves. What unfortunately is harder to change is the absence of mixes functions in the neighborhood, and the relative distance from the city center (at least the perceived one) and from the Ring that runs across Berlin. One has anyhow to say that an underground station lies quite close to the blocks.

Two apartments at ground floor share the garden.

Ongoing renovation: note the external insulation being "attached" and the effort with colors.

New entrance with shed. Again the color-attempt.

An example of Plattenbau-description that escapes (n)ostalgia is "Platte mit Aussicht", a film-documentary on the Dresden-Gorbitz quartier.

Gorbitz - MyVideo

More and high-quality pics here.

Housing Problems - London 1935

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 22:36:00 +0000

In 1935 Arthur Elton, Edgar Anstey, John Taylor and Ruby Grierson filmed Housing Problems, sponsored by the British Commercial Gas Association, an attempt to tackle the problem of slums in the outskirts of East London, seen both from the perspective of experts of planning and architecture (from whom we hear only the voice) and slum-inhabitants, exposed to the camera via direct interviews.

Brief history of smuggling between Ticino and Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:39:00 +0000


Smugglers carried goods (25/30 kg.) in their "backpacks" made of jute. B/W images via swissinfo.ch

Smuggling between Italy and Ticino was since the early 19th Century an endemic economical trend, because of the very basic reason that roughly half of the Ticino boundary lies along the Italian one, and different tax legislations let a convenient income margin for goods that were not declared at the border: this borderland was a strategic hub for goods traveling from north to south Europe and vice-versa. With the construction of the Gottardo railway tunnel (1872-82) this "European" role was strongly enhanced.

Model: in black Ticino; from left Lake Maggiore, Lugano and Como.
White wires are smuggler's main routes. Brown piece of cloth is jute.

Governments in Ticino and Lombardy (Spanish, Austrian, French, and then Italian) always tried to address and stop illegal commerce, but since in Switzerland there is nearly no flatland to cultivate, grain and flour in great quantity was transported (illegally) from the "Pianura Padana" to the Swiss population and smuggling represented an opportunity for both populations, dealing with basic commodities, that is why this activity was seen as a relief for communities on both sides; to get what was necessary, not what was luxurious; a way to resist to the fiscal oppression of foreign powers, ruling the north of Italy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. It also represented a way of communication between the two States, since it was necessary to set up a net of personal and fiduciary relationships.
After the French Revolution the Italian State (under the control of Napoleon) promulgated in 1803 the monopoly of salt, tobacco and gunpowder: these goods started coming then from Switzerland, where no monopoly was run, as well as coffee.


Support from the population was necessary: smugglers were well accepted.

In order to avoid patrols smugglers chose demanding routes.

Around 1848, when the constitution of the Italian Republic was still in progress, Ticino was fundamental in printing democratic pamphlets and distributing them illegally in Italy, or hosting central figures of the Italian Risorgimento, one for all, Carlo Cattaneo. As well in 1848, with the purpose of damaging the Austrian Government in north of Italy, in Brissago, on the Swiss shore of the Lake Maggiore, was founded a tobacco factory, producing the same products of Austrian factories: same quality but lower price. Cigarettes were then spread in Italy through smuggling.

Goods left along the way.

Patrolling around Lugano CH.

Towards the end of the 19th Century a fence was built along the border, and smugglers had to organize themselves better and more efficiently.

Jute "shoes" were need to minimize noise while walking.

Between the two World Wars, smuggling was reduced, because of better patrolling, due to the fear that enemies would invade the territory, and because much of the male population which was not fighting found a job in building infrastructure for the Army. Between 1943 and 1948 smuggling arose again: this time the main good to smuggle was rice, coming from Italy to Switzerland. From the 1950s on, smuggling started dealing with monopoly goods, rather than basic goods, as well as with drugs, becoming a international criminal organization.

A moment of rest cleaning out mud from shoes.

Transportation system: New York 1940s vs. Beijing 2010s

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:38:00 +0000

A couple of interesting videos related to mobility in a metropolis, distant in spatial terms but also chronological: first a short movie about New York City in the 1940s; although 1941 appears as release date some footage is more recent, coming from the early '50s. The idea of blood circulation from William Harvey is taken as a main reference to represent and explain mobility and fluxes right from the title: "Arteries of New York City".

Second video, a TV Chinese broadcast about the new "Straddling bus"(to be seen along Beijing's streets soon?).

Related posts:
The Changing City - mid 1960s
Urban renewal: 1955 vs. 2006

The Changing City - mid 1960s

noreply@blogger.com (Marco Capitanio) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:43:00 +0000

Though oversimplifying reality and popular in attempt, this short film from the mid-1960s gives you an interesting hint of the debate about suburbia and the city in general in USA at that time, catalyzed
in New-York on one side by the journalist and activist Jane Jacobs and on the other by the urban planner Robert Moses: avoiding the risk of drawing a caricature of them as antagonists, it is nonetheless possible to say that Jacobs, especially with her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", 1961, addressed a sharp critique to the most rigid elements and aspects in terms of urban planning and architecture of Modernism, which Moses happened to represent. This film touches in 15 minutes the questions of sprawl and suburbia, car-dependency, social boredom; urban renewal and investment, decay of city-centers, governance.

Bearing in mind the contemporary tendency and easiness in pointing out the failures of Modernism, one of the main urban and housing modernist catastrophes, contemporary to Jacobs, was the 1954 housing project Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis, Missouri, designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, best-known for the Twin Towers in New-York. The following is a description by Robert Hughes, quoting architecture historian Charles Jencks, claming the demolition of Pruitt Igoe (1972-74) to be the death of Modernism.

Like tragically September 11 and the Twin Towers, Pruitt Igoe became widely popular on screen, as you can see from Kooyanisqatsi, film documentary by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass.

Related posts:
Urban renewal: 1955 vs. 2006