Comments on: Holistic urban water management in Chinese urbanisation: Atelier Herbert Dreiseitl in Zhangjiawo New Town

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:49:11 +0000

All thoughtful points, but more related to the social experience of appartment living than to the experience of living in an appartment. The nearest I have been to the experience is in hotels and on those occasions I have rather enjoyed both the social isolation of being way above the ground and the views that have been obtained by the lofty elevation. I can’t promise it, but I can see that I could do with some real experience of appartment living.

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:22:22 +0000

The answer to question (3) is yes. It may be that you are talking to someone who is particularly spatially and experientially sensitive but I would say the ten story apartment on the hill is very different to the one hundred story apartment.

Step one: In your imagination leave the top most apartment of each block and exit via the fire escape stairs, now via the lift and lastly from your apartment window rescued by the fire brigade.

Step two: Now leave messages with all of the residents in both apartment blocks informing them you are having a New Years Eve party on the roof and that they are welcome to attend and that you will be catering.

Step three: You have found keys belonging to someone in the block consider how you might locate the owners and return the keys.

Step four: The body corporate has decided to renovate the apartment block and install a pool they are seeking contributions from all residents on a per m2 basis. They have invoiced you for your share.

Step five: Someone has been gone missing from the apartment block and the police are interviewing all residents including yourself to ascertain how well and what they know about the missing person. Do you know him and what can you tell them?

Step six: Someone is proposing to build a ten story apartment in front of your block which will largely obscure the ocean views, how do the residents of your block feel in general about this development?

Step seven: Friday night is party night and every second apartment in the block is occupied by dedicated revellers. You work night shift. Are you going to buy earplugs?

Step eight: The airconditioning (heating and cooling) in the apartment block is not operating and is expected to be undergoing repairs and maintenance for a month. How are you feeling?

Step nine: The body corporate has just given permission for small dogs and cats to be allowed in the apartments. You start to wonder what the limits of the description ‘small’ are?

Step ten: There are rumours that one of the apartments has been sold to a famous landscape architect. You wonder where on the property he might be gardening or whether this is just his city apartment?

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:39:13 +0000

I have never lived in an apartment block however (1) I can see that a 10-story block looks very different from a 100-story block (2) if one lives on the 10th floor of a 10-story block is it a different experience from living on the 10th floor of a 100-story block (3) if one lives on the 10th floor of a 10-story block on a hill (to get a wide view), is it any different from living on the 100th floor of a 100-story block which is not on a hill? Sorry to be pernickity! But I do think that living in a house with a garden is a different experience in kind to living in an appartment.
The photograph of the beltway looks very like the road to the Forth Bridge, outside Edinburgh (though I believe it is blocked by unseasonal snow this week – said to be caused by global warming).

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 04:33:41 +0000

Actually living in a 10 story apartment block
[ http://ads.rentbits.com/img/user/7557/25474/1.jpg ]is quite different to living in a 100 story apartment block. [ http://www.michaelturton.com/Taiwan/taipeinov03_06.jpg ] This building in Taipei one is a 100 storys (and although not an apartment block)I guess you can appreciate the difference?

As for roads
[ http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/content/images/2006/07/03/sheppey_crossing_road_view_470x355.jpg ], you are right, ditto. This eight + two lane road in the US is called a beltway: and is probably a good example as far as ten lanes go.[ http://www.capital-beltway.com/ALMB-Widened.jpg ]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 08:52:33 +0000

I agree with Samuel Staley about the inhuman scale of Megacities, though I suppose people will get used to this, as they do to most things, but I am doubtful about superdensity making cities or buildings essentially different. Living in a 100 story appartment block is, I imagine, much like living in a 10 story appartment block, just as driving on 10-lane road is much like driving on a 4-lane road. But I am pleased that Europe does not have any megacities.

By: Christine

Christine — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 03:36:53 +0000

Samuel Staley would be a good person to engage in conversation with Chinese Jane as he states the problem quite succinctly….Urbanism in China is well, despite all its Western appearances, peculiarly Chinese.[ http://www.planetizen.com/node/24437 ] What makes it so? It seems superdensity is one of the attributes of Chinese Megacities. One of the primarily problems as Samuel sees it is the potential loss of ‘human scale.’

Perhaps the rise of the Megacity is a Post postmodern phenomenon?
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity ]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:07:08 +0000

I love the idea of a Chinese Jane – but what would be the equivalent of ‘Jane’, with its welcome connotations of ‘someone with common sense who believes in plain speaking’?
I would not say that Jacobs is ‘deeply flawed’; it is one recipie for good urban space – and cities need fat recipie books.

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 05:01:40 +0000

Well yes. And yet the two images have been combined in a critique on the reification of Jane Jacobs with the hope for the emergence of a Chinese Jane:

“Jacobs founded a powerful myth of urbanism, that the sine qua non of urban form was to found in the ‘ballet of Hudson Street’, and with it created such as narrow definition of what represents vitality in cities that it can only be achieved with the values that Jacobs proscribed, and that conversely, anything that ignores any of these principles must be doomed to failure. The New Urbanists have taken a set of observations from Death and Life of Great American Cities, and turned them into design guidelines, a form of environmental determinism that in many ways is the exact opposite of what Jacobs wrote and stood for. The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a compelling read, but it is deeply flawed book.”

[ http://newsfeed.kosmograd.com/kosmograd/2010/06/the-ballet-of-ipod-city-1.html ]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:35:16 +0000

Degas might be envious if Herbert Dreiseitl could achieve the aesthetic of an underwater dance. It is only as a photographer that I appreciate the Gritty Modernity.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:26:11 +0000

I wonder if Dreiseitl’s projects can embody something of the aesthetic qualities of the ‘Underwater Dance’?
[ http://www.behance.net/gallery/underwater-dance/45918 ]

Or a gritty Modernity? [ http://www.behance.net/gallery/Urban-Places/333678 ]