Think BIG - Copenhagen

Copenhagen is growing fast and with its 539,542 citizens and about 1.2 million in the metro area its a rather busy place.

One of the very famous examples in the Copenhagen planning history is the Finger Plan of 1947. Quite interesting how the formal shape of the human hand serves here as an icon for a strategy. It is not very modernist to use such this reference in such a direct way. But nevertheless also Le Corbusier referred occasionally to the body in urban planning projects as a reference. However, here it is a very litteral translation and it has never grown out of it. The different elements are still, aso on Wikipedia, called the Ringfinger, the little finger, and so on. In a very modernist tradition one would maybe expect a stronger interpretation of the function of the hand, in the sense of form follow function.

But there are many more interesting projects. A great Timeline of the Copenhagen urban planing history can be found on Engineering-Timelines.


Image taken from Skyscrapercity / The Finger Plan 1947 provides a strategy for the development of Greater Copenhagen, Denmark. According to the plan, Copenhagen is to develop along five 'funger', centred on S-train commuter rail lines, which extend from the 'palm', that is the dense urban fabric of central Copenhagen. In between the fingers, green wedges are supposed to provide land for agriculture and recreational purposes.

One of the latest additions, not yet on the above timeline, in the BIG contribution of a new and of course BIG rethinking of the wider Copenhagen area. It is entitled: '1947-2047: From Finger Plan to Loop City'. The project was presented at the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice 2010 and was really a collaborative project. It goes with loads of credits: Presentation developed by BIG + Kollision + CAVI. Loop City Vision by BIG + Tom Nielsen + ReD Associates + ARUP. Presentation sponsored by Realdania.

The key idea is to develop a ring around the the Øresund Strait combining Sweden and Denmark into a one urban area. By connecting the fingers with a light railway and then extending along the little finger clockwise around the Strait all the way down to Malmö and back across the bridge connecting to the thumb.

A very bold gesture with even bolder infrastructure-architecture hybrids. It features the reinterpretation of a Roman aquaduct or a highway loop in the style of model racetrack features. Landmarks I suppose, the point comes across.


Image taken from Danish Architecture Centre / The ten rings of the Øresund region by BIG et all, 2010.

Interesting are the ten layers the team has based the project on. Of course transport and sustainability are at the very top of the importance list, but the layer 10 with the nationalities reflects a very specific attitude to wards foreigners and migrants. The nationalities already established and presumed to grow in the near future feature as an important argument of the project. Its not something negative that has to be hidden, but something that can be built upon become a driving force. There are of course some elements embedded in this like the "København M" as a reference to the rivalry between Danmark and Sweden, but its and key part. Danemark is living a very liberal culture, this is reassuring.

Postal Tracking - Where the Mail Goes from London

Inspired by Tim Knowles' work on postal tracking as well as the publication "The Englishman who posted himself", this had to be tried. Maybe one should not try this at home, however, we did. This project is run in collaboration with Studio-Bread in Vienna.

The tracker was sent from London to Vienna, where it arrived after many days, too many days actually. The battery was dead, but the tracker alive. And to much surprise it actually contained data. It did record for the time siting around various Royal Mail London sorting centres.


Image by single-blogs / GPS and parcel as used on the way from London to Vienna. Parcel created by Studio-Bread.

It came back from Vienna in a much more sophisticated little box, faster and with more data. Some places in Vienna, including the airport and presumably a postal sorting centre. And, one is stunned Royal Mail is organised to this extend, on the way back the tracker asses the same sorting centres. From Heathrow back in to London where it sits at the Clerkenwell sorting centre again.


Google Earth embedded, linking to a KML file. You can use the time slider to track the parcel. You can manually adjust the time window. Active tracks are shown in bright yellow rest is faded out. Zoom in to see the locations in detail. You can make your own Google Gadget HERE.

Apparently "Mount Pleasant is one of the world's largest sorting offices, covering an area of 7.5 acres. It's home to an expansive set of 23 miles of train tunnels which were built to deliver the post and did so up until May 2003. Though the railway is no longer used the tunnels, running 70 feet under the streets of central London between Whitechapel and Paddington, still remain. There are no visitors allowed" from LondonTown.


Image taken from Londontown / Royal Mail Mount Pleasant Sorting Office (Clerks working in the Return Letter Office, Mount Pleasant, 1934).

Since this is not much here is a more inspiring clip as it was mentioned by radek in a comment on the last postal tracking post on this blog - thanks for the link again.

Book - Posting Things, any Thing

The good old post service has had a difficult stand with the raise of the digital message. The romantic love letter as well as the intense debating correspondence has largely shifted into the virtual realm of messages on a computer screen. The main content of mail remaining is legal documents that need to be in physical form or parcels. Things still need to be moved.

What the mail service provides, beyond delivering post, is a web of connection. In fact a very dense and very flexible network with numerous elements, links and nodes. These ranges from a post office, to a distribution and sorting centre to the postman in the street delivering.

Based on a detailed system of code every functional unit in the city i accessible through this web an can connect to any other unit. Quite and important and versatile institution this is. In todays cities we relay on a number of such infrastructure systems constructing and serving the urban landscape, such as power networks and streets. However the mail and address system is probably the most flexible one.

Mail correspondence has a long tradition and is looking through historical works, for example in art or science, the letters between different figures in volved act a an important medium of exchange and stimulation.

In a recent visualisation 'Visualizing the Republic of Letters' developed at Stanford University by Daniel Chang, Yuankai Ge, Shiwei Song, Nicole Coleman, Jon Christensen, and Jeffrey Heer the past correspondance of 55'000 letters by 6400 people over about 200 years has be mapped and animated. The visualisation is based on the e-enlightment project, an electronic database for letters and lives. "Electronic Enlightenment reconstructs the extraordinary web of correspondence that marked the birth of the modern world."



In a recent Princeton Architectural Press publication the topic of the mail and especially the parcel i explored from a very different perspective. The book 'The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects' by John Tingey traces the story of Willie Reginald Bray. It is not just about the person but about the special experiments he staged practically exploring the possibilities of the mail service. Basically he just posted everything and anyone, including himself.

The postal service became very popular with the radical changes in 1840 in prices and structure. The mail needed to be pre payed by the sender (was previously payed by the receiver) and a simplified pricing structure, one penny for a letter in the UK.

Bray however wanted to explore the boundaries of this 'shipping things' on both ends, the side of the object and what could possibly be sent, as well as the coding system, the addresses and the labeling.


Image taken from fingersports / A picture postcard utilised the image as an element of the address. 'To a resident nearest to these rocks'.

These are very interesting parameter of the service. Bray for example developed a series of postcards with coded addresses that required the postman to deceiver the intended receiver. This could be in the form of a rhyme, writing using wax or using symbols. During the high days of the pictue card area he also utilised these pictures as the address, only with the accompanied instruction "to the resident nearest". The actual address was aso of interest to Bray and he experimente with sending letters and postcards to train drivers for example, as a moving destination.

The object posted in the second categorie ranged from onions to dogs and as mentioned himself. It was in February 1900 that he tested the Mail service and again in November 1903 that he posted himself as a 'Person Cyclist' back home. Bray claimed this to be the first time a person has ever been posted.

The book pulls together this rather curious story about a man's efforts to test out the service that links together across the entire country. And this collection possibly highlights the exact difference between the generally linking infrastructure and this postal linking network. It works in both directions and is in this sense a truly interactive service that can be, as Bray demonstrates customised to a large extend.

Tingey, J., 2010. Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects, the, Princeton Architectural Press.

Also thanks to James from spatialanalysis for the letter link.

Book - The Infrastructural City

The city has many different faces and as we all know it cannot be described in one sentence or one equation. It also is not a computer chip, although some recent master plans might have a formal similarity, nor is it a single organism growing for one purpose. It is more of a collective consisting of individuals capable of creating, deciding and moving. It is organized, as one currently would describe it, in networks and some of the elements of the collective are private where as other are public, in the sense of providing service to a larger group of the collective. Within the network these services manifest in infrastructure serving the public. In a number of ways this infrastructure tells a large part of the story about the collective or the city as such. In the sense of 'Show me your infrastructure and I tell you who you are.' the book 'Infrastructural City - Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles' edited by Kazys Varnelis and published by Actar tells the story of an urban area. This specific focus reveilles so much about the society that invented it, it is fascinating and sometimes shocking. From mobile phone tower camouflaged as palm trees to engineered tarmac graffiti everything is revealed and sets the context to the 21st century society.


Image by single-blogs / Book spread.

The analysis comes in three parts, Landscape, Fabric and Objects. The titles do not obvious characterize the content though. I haven't really figured out what the organisation is. This, however doesn't matter because you should read them all, or the reader can jump from one to another and back. It is not a necessarily linear read and this is a relief, because its content is extremely dense.
The detailed descriptions are accomplished with three elements describing the linear city. Lane Barden follows linear infrastructure elements and explores the city. This gives a very specific angle on the subject, but also helps high lighting due to the focus. The lines are documented by a map and sequential photographs as well as a little bit of background text. In a very calm and focused way the city takes shape along these lines. The elements are, the river, the street - Wilshire Boulevard and the trench - freight transport.


Image by single-blogs / Book spread.

In 'Counting (on) Change' Roger Sherman describes and illustrated the pace at which change takes place and how planning and design professionals fall behind the latest trends and are doomed to react rather than help shape the future. He sais: "For architects, the time has come to recognize, finally, that contemporary urbanism is better rethought around conceptions of progress and potential - via design strategies for unfolding the future - rather than by another utopian horizon." In a series of detailed diagrams the negotiations and changes over land and ownership at a number of scales.
The book ends with a report on probably the biggest and most vital piece of infrastructure in the city of Los Angeles. 'The Trench' is the ten miles long transport corridor Bringing the arriving goods from the port out of the city to distribution centres that will feed the rest of North America. The specs are impressive, more than $200 billion in cargo are transported on this route, but it is largely unnoticed as a feature in the city. It used to be a dominating feature due to its rail crossings and activity of the trains, but nowadays all the trains run in a fifty feet wide and thirty-three feet deep cut on a lower city level out of sight. And still it is probably the main artery of the city. Lane Barden sais: "It would be realistic to argue that the trench is central to the everyday efficiency of global capitalism."
In this sense, the city might as well be a machine.

This is a book on urban infrastructure that not only describes the elements, but positions them in a social and cultural city context. The approach is not about isolating elements to simplify it, rather it is about piecing it together to help shape an understanding of the whole. It really is a book about the city, the city of the everyday.

For other reviews see: archidose or we-make-money-not-art.


Varnelis, K., 2009. The Infrastructural City. Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles, Barcelona: Actar.

Book - Atlas of the new Dutch Water Defence Line - Colour Seduction

A book you don't want to give out of your hands for its beautiful cartography and graphic design overall. Well it goes in the tradition of Atlases designed by Jost Grootens. He has only recently received the Rotterdam Design Prize for the set of atlases he designed for 010 Publishers so far. Those are the Groten KAN Atlas, the Metropolitan World Atlas, the Limes Atlas and the Vinex Atlas.
The now published 'Atlas of the New Dutch Water Defence Line' edited by Rita Brons and Bernhard Colenbrander, designed by Studio Joost Grootens and published by 010 Publishers adds an other chapter to this 'series'. It continues with the power full use of colour that already the 'Metropolitan World Atlas' made so attractive, but this new publication makes a lot better use of the overall appearance. It is a real gem.
In the first place it is the cartography you will be looking at, but beside this the book actually has a true subject. And this is simply as the title says the Dutch Water Defence Line. Actually this is about defense in a proper military sense, and not as you might have guessed while already seduced by the pretty colours about water defense. Since it is set in the Netherlands it could have been about water drainage and pumping systems to fight the storm flooding of vital agricultural land, but its not. It is about a specific element of Dutch history, built between 1815 and 1885 as a "technically accurate territorial military system" (Johan van der Zwart abd Clemens Steenbergen in Atlas of the New Dutch Water Defence Line, p.28)
In a nutshell the military conceptis to defend the territory by simply flooding a stretch of land and in this way make it impossible for any land based mode of transport to traverse. It sounds very effect full and simple, but is actually a rather complicated piece of infrastructure and engineering. A detailed system of canals and basins are laid out in such a way as to create, by opening strategically positioned flood gates, a man made flood zone.
The whole system is based on the element the Netherlands has enough anyway and since water has its very own rules the given parameters are tight. Not only from the water element but also in terms of the landscape. In this sense, the here documented military defense structure is in a very strong way trying to make the most of a successful management of possibilities over constraints. This results ins a strongly context based solution, that is unique to this exact location and circumstances and paints a beautiful portrait of the character of an entire region.


Image taken from 010 Publishers / Showing a spread of the publication.

As hinted in the introduction, the graphics, cartography and design overall are brilliant. Especially the colour schema used for the maps is intriguing. In terms of the graphic design even this book is not protected from mistakes and problems. Everyone who is working with maps and plans knows these painful moments when you have a strong concept and clear structure and then for some elements it just doesn't work out. A name is too long to fit in the desired space in the key, in one summary map suddenly two colours representing important information cancel each other out or the approach chosen for one element does not fit for another or in other scales. It is sort of a tradeoff and ad-hoc adjustment job one has to do, restricting damage while hoping the final product may remain close to the desired result. This sounds all very pain full, I know, and it actually is. However, this process can be used to continue developing the strategy and representation and ideally will raise the quality of the end product over the initially thought out concept. Still some minor problems will always be there and the quality of the end product is probably more about these are managed and integrated than how good the anyway functioning elements are developed. I believe this publication managed this process extremely well and the final product is great.
For me the main issue with the graphic elements in this publication is the representation of the forts. This being the central element of focus it plays many roles and obviously a single representation can't be able to play all of them equally well. The colouring of the water protecting the forts as well as the pink used for the fill are not always consistent with the overall context of the maps.
The maps actually come with quite extensive background information in the form of essays and I think it is worth pointing this out because of the almost over powering presence of the cartography. I kind of owe it to this review that I have actually read and tried to understand the background, because otherwise I am pretty sure I would have been (still am) simply seduced by the pretty pictures and had satisfied put the publication to the top of my pile of inspirations. But going beyond the graphics starts opening up a perspective on a cultural territorial identity of a region that is even more inspiring and actually informative.
In this sense there is a hidden treasure in this book, but one needs to battle the dragon of seduction first, a fight I am bound to loose, at times. This one is definitely worth the effort already for the beauty of an bright orange or pink.
A book, or even a series, that has definitely already set a standard and will let loose a trend.


Image taken from Kosmograd / Showing a spread of the publication.

See also reviews on mammoth and Kosmograd.


Brons, R. & Colenbrander, B. eds., 2009. New Dutch Water Defence Line, 010 Publishers.

The Sandpit New York- or Everyday is Beautiful

Probably the beauty of the product lies not in the subject of the product, but in the way it is done. Might not be the latest headline, but there is something to this. Can one build nice highways, is it possible to design a meaningful park and ride or can a disused railway lines turned into a park? Well you must have guessed it by now, I am thinking of specific examples here. Even though it is probably a lot easier to come up with terrible examples for infrastructure projects, you probably only have to look out the window, there are some really 'knock you out of your shoes' examples of good practice. A great collection is put together in the book 'the Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure', published by NAi Publishers.


Image taken from Archphoto / A view of the Swiss highway A16.

And of course here are the examples I was thinking of, 'Tunnel Artifices', highway projects by Flora Ruchat-Roncati and Renato Salvi 1988-2008, realized in Switzerland; 'Terminal Hoenheim Nord' by Zaha Hadid Architects 1999-2001, realized in Strassbourg, France; or the 'High-Line' by Dillier Scofidio + Renfro with James Corner Field Operations 2005-2010, in New York, USA.
And actually New York was what I wanted to get at, to introduce this beautiful timeLapse. A day in the Sandpit of the big Apple portrayed so beautifully the everyday situations that it lives up greatly to the examples give. Everyday life is beautiful, no matter what.

Book - The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure

Infrastructure plays an important role in our everyday life. It is the part that drives the urbanMachine. In recent years the work and especially the design of the infrastructure ‘objects’ has received a lot more public attention. The idea of ‘beautiful’ infrastructure ‘objects’ has obviously settled by now and this demonstrates the new Nai Publishers publication ‘The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure’ by Kelly Shannon and Marcel Smets. Probably this public shift has to be seen in a wider context, than simply the recent times. The conceptualisation of the urban alias infrastructure derives from the time of the industrialisation through to the futurists and mainly catalysed by the modernist movement. The importance of ‘form follows function’ for the trends of ‘iconic’ objects in architecture of the late nineties and early twenty-first century have translated onto infrastructure work. Traditionally this was the field of engineers but has consequently been taken over by architects. The gradual importance of the architect is reflected in the book, all the projects are classified first by the architect and if applicable followed by landscape architect, engineer, developer or artist.


Image taken from The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure / ‘Tunnel Artifice’ (1988-2008) by Architects Renato Salvi and Flora Rucjat-Roncati / on page 146-147

The book demonstrates the contemporary state of infrastructure design on a palette of projects drawn from around the world. With its 74 examples the publication could be called a encyclopedia of infrastructure projects and to some extend it claims to be a register of archetypes. Archetypes might be a bit too ambitious but icons definitely. It features the Yokohama Port Terminal by Foreign Office Architects (1995-2001), the Oresund Bridge and Tunnel by Architect Georg K.S. Rotne and Engineer ASO Group, Oresund Link Consultants (1992-2000), the High Line Park, by Architect Dillier Scofidio + Renfro and Landscape Architect James Corner Field Operations (2005-2010), the Orient Station by Architect Santiago Calatrava (1993-1998), the Millau Viaduct by Architect Foster + Partner, Bridge Engineer Michel Virlogeux and Landscape Architect Agency Ter (1993-2005), the Toledo Escalators and Car Park by Architect Martinez Lapena-Torres Architectes (1997-2000), the Hoenheim-Nord Terminus by Architect Zaha Hadid Architects (1999-2001) and the Curitiba Bus System by Architect Jaime Lerner (1966-1990) to name a few of the known examples. However there are gems to be discovered between the known examples, for example the Leidsche Rijn Bridges by Architect Maxwan Architects and Urbanists (1995-2005) or the Casar de Caceres Bus Station by Architect Justo Garcia Rubio and Engineer Jaime Cervera Bravo (1998-2003). The bridges documented in the book are really nice and the appearance of bridges has changed quite a lot in recent years, however on the other hand it still seems impossible to design a similarly beautiful rest place for a high way.
The content is structured into four chapters. The authors have chosen not to go with the common categories of infrastructure classification. The taxonomy here is structured into mobility ‘Imprints of Mobility on the Landscape’, physical presence ‘Physical Presence in the Landscape’, movement ‘The Perception of Landscape Through Movement‘ and public character ‘Infrastructure as Public Space. The authors explain their decision: ”... at a time when computer-refined search engines and availability of information are so prevalent, the mere compilation of cases has become rather senseless. Such a catalog risks becoming quickly outdated and will necessarily be incomplete. A taxonomy of design attitudes, by contrast, should remain valid over time.“ It could be argued against this approach, however the taxonomy is very consistent develop for this publication. In this sense it makes perfect sense and together with the detailed introductions to each chapter drive the book. It could almost be said that this is really the feature that distinguishes this book from any other collection of infrastructure projects. From this view point the examples can be seen as mere illustrations. However this description would not live up to the richness of the individual example. The fact that each projects documented on a spread also live on this independent level makes this publication a must have.


Image taken from The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure / ‘Dutch”Orgware“’Leidsche Rijn Bridges by Architect Maxwan Architects and Urbanists

Nevertheless, two points of critic need to be raised. The first one is the conceptualisation of infrastructure in independent ‘objects’. This approach clearly follows the iconic presentation of architectural projects of the OMA or Herzog and de Meuron type. Yes, it is a good way to reach out to consumers beyond practitioners and experts, as they are served with ready to consume glossy images. It fits the current, self promoted architectural ‘Zeitgeist’ of iconic, distinct, clean projects. However it misses the opportunity to establish infrastructure as something more than an ‘object’, but rather a collection of ‘objects’ or even better a network. Of course the bridge was contracted with this architect and delivered as such, but it is part of a national or maybe international network of highways. The same can be said of train stations, airports, tunnels and even car parks. More than architecture (building) projects the infrastructure calls for the context it is embedded to be considered. Take a new tram line e.g. ‘Floating Boxes’ Alicante Tram Stop (2005-2006 by Architect Subarquitectura on page 198-199. The ‘architecture’ is lovely, a brilliant example, but isn’t there a lot of infrastructure missed out concerning the tramline connecting ”a sting of towns along the Mediterranean coast“ ? The only example that actually makes use of a map to illustrate its extend and interconnection is the Qingai-Tibet Railroad from Xining to Lhasa by Engineer Li Jin Cheng (2001-2006). It has to be said, however that the authors do mention aspects of networks and context in the introduction texts, but it is largely absent from the individual project documentations.


Image taken from planningkorea.com / the tram stop at night

The second point it the selection of presented project. There is a lot of infrastructure been left out. What about Dams e.g. the Thames Barrier; Canals e.g. Panama; Pipelines; Power Stations; Military infrastructure; research facilities e.g. Antarctica stations or space missions or CERN; environmental disaster preventions e.g. storm surges, walls and dams; grids e.g. telecommunication, power; ... The short answer might be they don’t fir the iconic criteria if this was one, but the long answer might be that the field of infrastructure is simply too vast to fit into one publication and this would call for a Volume 2. As the present publications makes it on the list of must haves, a volume 2 is definitely something to consider. Table of content available from HERE.

From single-blogs 4

Image taken from Nai Publishers website / a sample spread introducing the La Granja Escalator project by José Antonio Martínez Lapeña & Elías Torres Archit, which could already be called a classic example.


Shannon, K. & Smets, M., 2010. The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.