Tuesday March 30th 2010, 10:51 am
Filed under: Graphic Design
I’m hopelessly addicted to map graphics and one of my favorite types of maps is that of the public transportation systems of cities throughout the world. I actually have a nice collection of all the systems I’ve ridden in cities around the world. I find metro system maps especially fascinating. So imagine my delight when I came across a metro map-style graphic used to depict another one of my favorites, music.
This infographic by graphic artist Alberto Antoniazzi is meant to depict the most influential rock n’ roll bands and their relationships to one another. These maps are available for purchase here. Below is an enlargement of a small piece of the map:
Luzinterruptus, a Spanish guerrilla-style art collective based in Madrid who’s work I adore, is at it again but this time they’ve set their aim at the vegetated and the vertical. Their humorous criticism here is two-fold. One, the lack of green in urban spaces and two, the vertical gardens that are becoming so popular in many countries that the group feels lacks a certain level of accessibility in addition to the cost. They’ve chosen to make their statement in a traditional Luzinterruptus way, an at-first beautiful installation with light using materials chosen to deliver a message, installed by black-clothed messengers at night.
In addition to their message about urban green space as well as the criticism on vertical walls, the installation made me think about the food that we see in grocery stores today. Food now is packaged, preserved and made to look beautiful as it sits on shelves year round, completely disconnected from seasons and geography. It looks good but it is essentially artificial in nature. Perhaps the discussion of packaged beauty reaches far and wide, beyond urban greenery. And while I’d argue that vertical greenery is beneficial in many ways, there is a bit of a fad that has developed where blankets of green are appearing in various shapes and configurations in some design drawings and even the occasional built project that seem to have lost touch with the real purpose and are reaching more into the category of adornment. Here’s what the artists have to say about their installation,
With the installation Packaged vertical garden, we wanted to promote the preservation of urban greenery, because if we continue to eradicate it from public spaces or reducing it to inaccessible vertical faces, the only form of contact with nature will be in supermarket refrigerators, packaged with expiry dates.
In general, it is more comfortable for city planners to build inhospitable cement spaces, where there is no need for special care, than to design green spaces where the citizens can spend their time and enjoy public places.
In addition, we have noticed the increasing proliferation of vertical gardens, which are interesting decoratively speaking, but expensive to maintain and with which the citizens cannot interact or put to real use, being a minimal attempt at providing greenery, but in an inaccessible and artificial way…
For this installation we used 110 transparent food packaging containers, inside which we put leaves and branches found in the trees in the area and lights of course. Afterwards, we placed them on a wall in an ugly square in the center of Madrid and there we left our form of fashionable vertical garden.
Previous posts on the work of Luz Interruptus have been written about their recent and first ever public participation project called Caged Memories, their installation for Madrid’s White Night festival, an installation titled “Green Light Grafts” and also their piece titled “A Cloud of Bags Visit the Prado” where 80 recycled and lit bags were brought to the steps of the Prado Museum in Madrid with the overarching message to recycle. Also check out more of their work on their website.
Since 1986 a large strip of land was left with only the bones of what was to be the Lima, Peru’s railway for an electric train. The space remained unchanged, a ghostly construction site for the train that never happened, until the Spanish collective Basurama came up with a way to turn the abondoned concrete collumns and once forgotten urban space into an amenity for the people. And then earlier this year, the Ghost Train Amusement Park was born.
Basurama, from the word basura meaning trash, has been working with trash for over a decade throughout Latin America and describes themselves as “a forum for discussion and reflection on trash, waste and reuse in all its formats and possible meanings. Our aim is to study those phenomena inherent in the massive production of real and virtual trash in the consumer society, providing points of view on the subject that might generate new thoughts and attitudes. We find gaps in these processes of production and consume that not only raise questions about the way we manage our resources but also about the way we think, we work, we perceive reality.”
The bright and colorful park features recycled tires transformed into multi-person swinging contraptions and climbing structures along with lines of swings and a canopy line for kids to zip along from the unfinished structure through the color-wrapped concrete collumns.
What does a city with twice the density of New York City do when there is simply no more space on the ground for pedestrians? The city of Mumbai has come up with the idea to create a skywalk network for those on foot trying to get from one place to another while getting them out of the way of the dangers from being forced to walk in the streets due to overcrowding from street vendors, squatters, vehicular traffic and also the lack of sidewalks.
It’s an unfortunate situation when the solution is to pull the people out of the streets and give them a sort of pedestrian super highway to bypass the streetlife. The idea may seem like a nice one at first, providing pedestrians the ability to stroll leisurely from the train station for up to two miles to their ultimate destination through a covered walkway with fresh air and views out over the city but at the same time, what is to happen with the streets and what will keep the skywalks free from the problems that brought on the construction of the skywalks in the first place? Are the streets of Mumbai simply beyond repair? Is creating a network of skywalks really the best thing for Mumbai in the long term or is it like giving up on the city streets and seeking the easy way out?
From the Wall Street Journal:
“The fate of the city’s foot soldiers is crucial because close to 60% of the trips made here are on foot. That makes this one of the most pedestrian-powered metropolises in the world. Until now, however, pedestrians have been largely ignored. Some Mumbaikars, as citizens are known, aren’t happy. Retailers say they are losing business while residents say skywalks block views, allow pedestrians to peek into private homes and are just as likely to be taken over by homeless families and shopless vendors as the sidewalks.”
“Still, something had to be done, city planners say. The road under the Yellow Caterpillar (the first skywalk built which is bright yellow, thus nicknamed by the locals), like station roads across the city, is an obstacle course through a minefield. Commuters spill down the Bandra Station steps and into a knot of three-wheeled auto rickshaws, buses and trucks on the street below. The closest thing to a sidewalk here is a patch of dirt next to a crud-filled creek. Hundreds of commuters walk in the street, dodging vehicles as they go.”
“On the way to the nearby business park—home of Citigroup’s main India office and the National Stock Exchange—they pass through a slum. The roadside is occupied by small shops, families living in plastic-tarp homes, parked motorcycles and goats rooting through garbage. The tiny stretch of sidewalk that eventually emerges about five blocks from the station is cut short by the fence of a small neighborhood police station built directly on top of it. Then pedestrians have to find their way across an off-ramp of Mumbai’s busiest highway. There is a functioning traffic signal and even a policeman at the corner, but drivers often ignore both.”
“The obvious solution of widening the sidewalks just isn’t an option. Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is a thin spit of land bound on three sides by the Arabian Sea. Moving buildings to widen roads is next to impossible thanks to tough tenancy laws. Courts and politicians sensitive to the needs of the micro-entrepreneur make it difficult to move illegal street vendors.”
“Skywalks are quick to build, relatively inexpensive and only require land the city already controls. The projected bill for the 50-plus skywalks is around $300 million. The city expects to recover most of that cost by selling advertising space on them.”
“Building the perfect skywalk, however, hasn’t been easy. While the walkways run over government roads, there still often isn’t space on the ground to plant enough supporting columns. Longer stretches between columns mean the city has to spend more on stronger, lighter materials and thicker columns. Commuters found the early skywalks too boxy and bright, so new ones use curved roofs, dark colors and chrome.”
“When engineers started digging to build the foundations, they found the chaos on the street continues underground. A few feet down, they ran into uncharted water, electricity and phone lines as well as sewers, forcing them to redesign whole skywalks. Trying to get the city water authorities or state-run telephone company to shift infrastructure would take too long.”
“Engineering difficulties and neighborhood opposition have blocked six planned skywalks and could stop more, city planners say. But they will continue building them because the streets are getting worse everyday. The city has hired armed guards to keep skywalks clear and the response from commuters has been largely positive.”
Depsite the controversy of the skywalks and what the future holds for the street level, the people of Mumbai who use the skywalks are enjoying them because it cuts down their commute times, offers a stress free walk to work and even provides an enjoyable setting for a walk on one’s day off. In a crowded city where walking in the street is not only stressful but dangerous, Mumbai has come up with a solution that seems to be working for some pedestrians, at least temporarily. But what will come of the life in the street? Is there a creative solution that can work for everyone and doesn’t just take the pedestrians out of the equation altogether?
