Quick Clicks> Disaster Prone, Earthquake Averse, and the Melancholy Utopia
U.S. Natural Disasters Map (via NY Times)
Mapping Disasters. In and around New York City, we were fortunate Tropical Storm Irene created little more than flooding, fallen trees, and electric outages, and that last week’s tremors left no damage in the city. If these rare northeast natural disasters are getting you down, perhaps it’s time to consider moving to the safest place in the U.S. to avoid natural disasters? A NY Times infographic hasfound just the place: Corvallis, OR. Cities in Oregon and Washington state top the list, while areas in Texas and Arkansas have the highest risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and tornadoes.
Standing up to Earthquakes. Many of the east coast’s 19th century masonry buildings are not built to withstand a strong earthquake. How do those California skyscrapers withstand the west coast’s dangerous, powerful tremors? Gizmodo featured an array of earthquake-tech such as tuned mass dampers and roller bearings allow tall buildings to move with the earthquake and absorb shock.
Melancholy Utopia. The end of summer and beginning of fall will bring a flood of design events in European cities. Among them, more than forty designers will descend on Rotterdam on September 3rd to showcase their work throughout the city. The theme is Melanchotopia, an examination of the connections between melancholy and utopia, mourning and hope, said e-flux.
Dreaming of Rem
We’ve noted recently the preponderance of architectural documentaries, particularly those concerns the fields “greats”—from Gehry to Mockbee, Kahn to Shulman. Well, now you can add Rem Koolhaas to the list, as Archinect points us to this trailer for a new documentary in the works entitled Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect. The film got a nice little write-up in—where else—the Seattle Times, which explains that the documentary is as much about Koolhaas’ arrival at architecture as the architecture itself. Though that often seems to be the case, especially with Rem. How else could such a famous architect declare: “One of the exciting things about architecture is it gives you so many reasons to be modest. Because there are so many levels on which you can fail.” But at least we get all those cool visuals produced by OMA and AMO of buildings melding and morphing, as though there were a firm better suited to the big screen. After all, he’s a multimedia star, having already conquered music and typography. Read More
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