Saturday, February 07, 2009

IF ARTISTS DESIGNED CITIES


I'm not a fan of the mega city concept, where one architect designs the look of an entire city. That unified look is great for sci-fi movies (above), but most of us want the city we're actually going to live in to have more diversity. I like cities where each division has its own flavor, each section has its own story to tell.



Architects aren't sympathetic to any of this. They believe in the one-size-fits-all philosophy where the solution to every problem is simplistic, bold shapes.  I hate stuff like that.



Architects are clueless about what people really want.



A lot of what they're building today (above) will be the crime-ridden, concrete slums of tomorrow.



There's plenty of examples of good, vintage architecture out there, but you can't get architects to pay attention to it. Maybe it's time to give artists a turn at bat.  They can't do worse than what's around now. 




These days artists are steeped in graphic novels which are always depicting the dark side of things.  If artists designed a city they'd probably go for something funereal, like Gotham City in the "Batman" movie.




Such a city is bound to attract a criminal element.  Rather than leave their housing to chance, artists should build it (above) for them. Maybe something by H. R. Giger. 



Maybe thugs would feel at home in this environment, and not be tempted to venture out looking for victims.



Giger fantasizes about making murals out of human remains. (above). criminals should love that.




If the city is going to have a modern design, let's try something really drastic (above). Imagine going down that staircase on the upper left.  The steep angle would take your breath away, and descending would be difficult and dangerous...but it sure would be fun! 




Maybe a city of raised platforms half a mile in the air would make for a stimulating walk.



Maybe we need to flood the streets the way Venice is flooded. Wouldn't it be fun to take a boat to work?



Here's (above) a little Lego city that Norman Mailer built years ago, and which still stands somewhere. Each Lego block represents an apartment. Mailer said philosophers would live on the top, call girls would live in the white blocks, and corporate executives in the black ones.



Here's an idea (above) for giving Manhattan a kind of colorful, kid's playroom look.



Here's (above) a goth city where half the population is Christian and requires a lot of churches, and the other half are irreverent satanists who delight in building churches upside-down.




A city which is divided like that will naturally be pretty tense. To distract the population from their differences I suggest a diversion, perhaps a race of genetically modified giants who will walk around and randomly intimidate people.  



If the giants get out of hand, the city's water monsters will be unleashed. Water monsters eat giants. 



Here's (above) a possible layout for a New York City.  The buildings would be crammed together...really packed. Every window would be butted up to some window in the next building. if you want to live here you better be the kind of person who gets along with your neighbors. 




39 comments:

Anonymous said...

Every example we have of a designed city is one that is vastly impractical to human usage. I remember reading a book on city planning a few years ago that mentioned how one ingenious architect solved the problem of where to put sidewalks in a campus-like industrial/research park: He planted grass everywhere and waited a few months to see where people had worn paths, then laid the sidewalks on top of that! He was smart enough to let the users of his design influence it, not expect them to live to a preconceived notion.

Justin said...

Great post, Eddie! I love the pictures.

On an unrelated note, I am in the middle of an Odd Bodkins obsession. I can't get over that comic strip! I tracked down all 3 book collections and now I want all the San Fransisco Chronicle papers that ran it! Ever gone through something like that with a comic strip?

Brubaker said...

"Here's (above) a possible layout for a New York City. The buildings would be crammed together...really packed. Every window would be butted up to some window in the next building. if you want to live here you better be the kind of person who gets along with your neighbors."

Reminds me of when I lived in Japan. Depending on what part of the country you live in, the housing in the suburbs can be downright next to each other.

Austin Papageorge said...

What? Norman Mailer did Legos? Did not know that.


On another note, imagine in Dan Krall, Lou Police, Ted Blackman, and Tom Minton got to design a city.

deniseletter said...

Great Post!!Here is a link adding another related pic:

In the City

Shawn Dickinson said...

If I had a chance to design a city, I'd make it look like Toontown!

Hans Flagon said...

My idea for a planned city for 10,000 people in a square mile (some billionaires dream) did have at least two levels of Houses, 2 or three levels of apartments Brownstones condos, mostly 1900-1930 architecture, all brick or stone, Studio to one acre lots, with mixed zoning, underground utilities and walkways (that is almost as much or more thruways underground as above) and a strong emphasis against car use, while still allowing them. One of the weird bits was that house numbering, addresses, phone numbers, all went from 0000-9999. It was strongly grid based, with plenty of mass transit to keep people from taking organic shortcuts.

It was mostly pedestrian and bikes. Although there was parking and garages within, much vehicle use and storage was kept to a peripheral autopark.

Because most of the city were telecommuters working for Mr. Big Bucks, and the support such a community would need, there was some home to reign in the community to these restraints for some time. He offered the homes for 25% of wages, until you owned the place.

One of these days I'm going to have to throw those ideas on a web site.

Have you ever browsed this book, on the infrastructure necessary for NYC?

http://www.amazon.com/Works-Anatomy-City-Kate-Ascher/dp/1594200718

Anonymous said...

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2009/02/08/ I'm as pro environment as they come but I'm getting really sick of this type of sanctimonious pseudo-profound cartoon.

They're all just weaker versions of the Pogo Earth Day cartoon

Anonymous said...

also concerning Non Sequitur does anyone else notice that this generations Calvin and Hobbes ripoffs all seem to be cynical goth girls?

Awesome post Eddie, although It does seem to conflict with your love of Ayn Rand. I can see how you admire her championing of individuality etc. etc. but shes always struck me as quite humorless and serious. I'd almost call her the anticartoonist

Anonymous said...

I mean so much of great cartooning is the celebration of the basest qualities of humanity and she seemed to hold anyone who's ideal wasn't a stoic superman in contempt.

Anonymous said...

http://cybloodbane.tripod.com/pictures/comics/cfswaste.html you can make the exact same point and still be hilarious.

Anonymous said...

http://architecture.myninjaplease.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/dubai-towers-dubai.jpg Theres something about Dubai thats really offputting to me. It reminds me of this Williams Gibson article about singapore http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html

Anonymous said...

At different times I had an office next door to Lou Police and Ted Blackman, but we never built anything resembling a city. On the other hand, Uncle Eddie built entire civilizations out of scene folders.

Tom Minton

Anonymous said...

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/humor.html not the self deprecating type

Anonymous said...

the best humor is always irrational and silly, she seems to think that any joke that isn't making a specific philosophical observation is profoundly immoral

Anonymous said...

The best sort of people are the ones who do a silly walk once in awhile. Ayn Rand seems like she would have permanently cut off all contact with you if you weren't able to give her a sound philosophical reason for why you chose to walk in such in irrational manner

Hans Flagon said...

I've known some Randians with a sense for the absurd, but it seems a little damage done (Steve Ditko), goes a long way.

As far as thinning the herd of deer go, if it was not for hunting there would be a lot less trees and a lot more parking lots.

Most city planning types, including any pie in the sky less serious types Eddie has shown here, put a HELL of a lot of weight on greenspaces, parks, that is.

I think zoning that forces a business district to be several minutes commute from the residential district has made a lot of people rich in the short term, at the general detriment of society in the long term.

Anonymous said...

Hey Eddie, are you a libertarian?

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Buzz: I agree, and the man who let pedestrians decide where the walkways should go is a hero.

Phantom: My newspaper used to run Odd bodkins, then dropped it, in spite of large fan protest.

Denise: Cable cars to hillside towns? Good idea!

Shawn: Not a bad idea. Mickey and Minnie's houses look great!

Brubaker: I can imagine. I saw some of those crowded streets when I was there.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anon, Hans: I agree with Ayn Rand about a lot of things, but not everything. I can't discuss her politics here.

Her friend Barbara Branden told me that her whole literary attention was on drama, and that she didn't read or watch much comedy. She rarely told jokes. Barbara said she wasn't against comedy, she just didn't have a feel for it. When she wanted relief from the serious stuff she usually read detective stories. Some people are like that, and I don't take it as evidence of neurosis.

Oppo, Tom: Haw! I'd love to see a city designed by those guys. Tom should do a book on that theme. The fans would love it!

lastangelman said...

When I was a kid, I was very much attracted to Jetsons-styled architecture and design and was blown away by space station and moon base depicted in 2001:A Space Oddysey. I thought (at that tender age) many Western cities would now be large spheres on space needles, while the ground would be rehabilitated, reforested and pollution be a thing in the past. I'd draw reams of futuristic cityscapes using a ruler, protractor, compass, Spirograph and what other drawing tools I could grab. I still have a few of these buried in the attic.

Anonymous said...

thats fair Eddie, she was a good person, its more a certain section of her modern day admirers (not you) that bug me.

The computer hackers that see themselves as superior to everyone else (4chan) and the Alan Greenspan capitalist types.

There is a lot to her philosophy that is useful but much of it seems antithetical to the spirit of cartooning

Anonymous said...

just googled Barbara Branden, wow! she was really part of the inner circle. How did you meet her?

It seems Ayn Rand had more drama in her life than Simone Beauvoir and Sartre did!

Anonymous said...

I think youre right to dodge her politics, it wouldnt be a fun scene in the comments.

"Rand in my view is one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history" -Noam Chomsky

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anon: I don't know Barbara Branden but I chatted with her for a while at a dinner party in L.A. She was terrific: a really nice, intelligent person; not at all strident or dogmatic.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anon: The cybolldbane link was damaged. l read Gibson's terrific article on Singapore, and the Dubai towers were interesting. Ditto the Rand lexicon site. Thanks for the links.

Hans: My library doesn't have a copy of the Anatomy of a City book and Amazon doesn't say much about it. What makes it so interesting?

Anonymous said...

The broken link was the "animal waste management" Far Side cartoon of the construction worker bears redirecting a sewage pipe into a guys house. His reaction is the perfect Far Side pose. He has an indignant look on his face and his hands angrily on his hips.

I was trying to point out how cartoonists can get their views on society out while still being funny instead of joylessly condescending

Anonymous said...

"The computer hackers that see themselves as superior to everyone else (4chan) and the Alan Greenspan capitalist types.

Start an Ayn Rand thread on /b/, /tv/, or /r9k/ and see how much you get flamed/trolled.

pappy d said...

Eddie:

Have you seen "The Passion of Ayn Rand"? Helen Mirren is great in it. It centers on Ayn & the Brandens.

I'd love to see what Tom would do with urban areas zoned for crime.

Hans Flagon said...

Eddie, Works- anatomy of a city is basically technical drawings of how the day to day business of a city like new york is managed via its infrastructure. Sewers, water, electricity, garbage pick up and where it goes, incinerators, high rise water towers, side walk elevators, subways, shipping, Maufacturing, snow shoveling, street sweeping, cabs-- basically the Works. Tenndrils reach far and wide, from erie canal, much further han new jersey...

You can glance at it next time you are in a book store

Anonymous said...

didn't aristotle hate the idea of comedy?

Anonymous said...

Ayn Rand's favorite weekly television show was "The Untouchables." I attended a cast reunion in the 1980's during which Robert Stack pulled out and read a yellowed, lengthy fan letter from the woman herself. She stated that the show was great 'because the good guys always win.' Comedy it wasn't but she found it most entertaining. Pappy D, never mind what I'd do with urban crime area design. Jack Kirby was the guy for that! If anyone on earth could've come up with an alarm system to beat hell, it would have been him.

Tom Minton

Anonymous said...

I believe that all artistic expression is blasphemous and an affront to gods creation. To not be content with nature is a grave sin

Austin Papageorge said...

Cool! Tom Minton noticed my comment!


Also, add Barry Jackson as another potentially good architect.


Austin "oppo" Papageorge

Elliot Cowan said...

The giant squatting adolescent boy is a sculpture by Ron Mueck.
Before he was a fancy artist he was a cartoonist and puppeteer.
He's known mostly for playing the role of Ludo in the Jim Henson film Labyrinth, but beforehand did some great stuff on the Australian show Shirl's Neighborhood.
You'll find that show on Youtube.
It's great!

Julia said...

Hey! I've been the same room as those Ron Mueck sculptures. All alone. I was pretty intimidated.

Anonymous said...

I was at the acting animation talk you gave - it was very interesting. I'm not an artist so parts of it were moot to me, but where you talked about what makes something funny in comedy writing was very interesting and possibly useful in the future. Hope to see you speak again sometime...

randolph said...

In (late) passing... But it really happened in NYC! See Hugh Ferris, passim.

Anonymous said...

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as
though you relied on the video to make your point. You clearly know what youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence
on just posting videos to your weblog when you could be giving us something informative to read?


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