"Everybody
has their own America, and then they have the pieces
of a fantasy America that they think is out there but
they can't see. (...) So the fantasy corners of America
seem atmospheric because you've pieced them together from
scenes
in movies and music and lines from books."
Quotes by Andy Warhol:America, Harper & Row New York
1985
Source: online-dictionary
wwwebster Main Entry:
1block (...)
6 a (1) : a usually rectangular space (as in a city) enclosed
by streets and occupied by or intended for buildings (2) : the distance
along one of the sides of such a block b (1) : a large building
divided into separate functional units (2) : a line of row houses (3)
: a distinctive part of a building or integrated group of buildings.
(...)
2block
transitive senses 1a : to make unsuitable for passage
or progress by obstruction b archaic : BLOCKADE c: to
hinder the passage, progress, or accomplishment of by or as if by interposing
an obstruction d: to shut off from view
<forest canopy blocking the sun> e: to
interfere usually legitimately with (as an opponent) in various games
or sports f: to prevent normal functioning of g: to restrict
the exchange of (as currency or checks)
3 : to shape on, with, or as if with a block
4 : to secure, support, or provide with a block <block a hat>
synonym see HINDER
Thesaurus
Entry Word: block
Function: noun
Synonyms barricade, barrier, blank wall, blockade, roadblock, stop,
wall
In 1807 Simeon
deWitt, Governeur Morris and John Rutherford are commissioned
to design the model that will regulate the 'final and conclusive' occupancy
of Manhattan. Four years later they propose (...) 12 avenues
running north-south and 155 streets running east-west.
With that simple action they describe a city of 13 X 156
= 2,028 blocks (excluding topographical accidents): a matrix
that captures, at the same time, all remaining territory
and all future activity on the island. The Manhattan Grid.
The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous
lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders
to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies
for the distinction of one block from another. (...) The
Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control
in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid,
a metropolis of rigid chaos (...) In the single block -
the largest possible area that can fall under architectural
control - it develops a maximum unit of urbanistic Ego.
(...) Since all Manhattan blocks are identical and emphatically
equivalent in the unstated philosophy of the Grid, a mutation
in a single one affects all others as a latent possibility:
theoretically, each block can now turn into a self-contained
enclave of the Irresistible Synthetic. That potential also
implies an essential isolation: no longer does the city
consist of a more or less homogeneous texture - a mosaic
of complementary urban fragments - but each block is now
alone like an island, fundamentally on its own. Manhattan
turns into a dry archipelago of blocks.
Quotes from Rem Koolhaas: Delirious New York, 001 Publishers Rotterdam 1994
A common alternate
method of street arrangement is the grid (...) It has very
ancient roots. The Bronze Age villages of northern Italy
were laid out in a clear rectangular grid and so was the
ancient Indus city of Mohenjo-Daro; Greek colonial cities,
Roman camps, and medieval towns (...) were all planned
on it. It has been the preferred form for new communities.
It is systematic, easy to lay out, and provides equal,
rectangular building sites. It allows a numbering system
for easy location. The motives for choosing a grid may
be philosophic (...) or they may be strictly utilitarian,
as when the Commissioners laying out Manhattan in 1811
rejected circles, ovals, and stars and decided that "strait-sided
and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and
the most convenient to live in." (...) Size, density, grain,
outline, pattern - all are basic aspects of the city's
physical form. The impression of monotony arises in part
from the lack of necessary specialization; it is not inherent
in the pattern (...) Yet towering buildings set on open
ground may have only an illusory advantage if overall densities
remain high and the open spaces are overloaded. In certain
sections, particularly shopping and office areas, there
is both a technical and a psychological need for concentration
which the open pattern cannot supply (...) The modern city
requires a rhythmical balance between enclosure and openness,
[between] concentration and freedom.
Quotes from Tridib Banerjee; Michael Southworth (ed): City Sense and City Dense.
Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch, MIT Press 1991
(...) Martha Rosler
reports of iron teeth installed in the ground of house
entrances in the Bowery that should spoil sleeping comfort
for the homeless. At the Viennese Karlsplatz park banks
are subdivided through armrests into single seats to prevent
people from lying down. By the means of many similar, more
or less subtle strategies, social segregation is pushed
through. (...) In these days, the new Austrian state apparatus
follows ideological more than economic paradigms and protects
government buildings and right-wing party headquarters
with barricades and water cannons against the new "civil
society".(...)
Andreas Fogarasi 2.00
(...)Rudolph Guliani's
law and order ideology forces people to disappear under
the surface of the city. In its extreme consequence the "zero-tolerance" policy
allows no visibility of "the other" of society. (...) If
we read Manhattan as Bachelard analyses the house, we identify
N.Y.'s underground spaces as a huge Bachelardian cellar
which is a sphere of the collective subconscious of the
city. The tunnel people are part of the supressed elements
of that collective subconscious.(...) In N.Y.C. the uniformity
of the grid is confronted with the anarchy of architectural
fragments, which are depending on financial speculation.
The grid as a real abstraction is in conflict with the
organism of the city that N.Y. represents. Manhattan is
a social construct with its mechanisms of displacement,
repression, gentrification and segregation.(...)The grid
allows the spatial proximity of oppositions (Wall Street-Meat
Market) while the mental segregation is kept. (...)The
existence of people living under the surface of the city
in tunnels and chambers means a new occupation and definition
of urban structure. A new "social layer" is introduced
to Manhattan.(...)
Andre Krammer 2.00
March
16; 6:30pm
Open
discussion: "Strategies of Resistance Today: the
current situation in Austria"; with participants
and guests
for further information
on the current situation in Austria, we recommend the
following links:
www.betazine.org
www.demokratische-offensive.at
www.gegenschwarzblau.net
www.t0.or.at/gettoattack
www.popo.at
www.sos-mitmensch.at
March 17: 2 pm
Open
discussion: "Feedback / Reflection and Discussion
about the project and the collaborative working
method"; with participants and guests |