Pamphlet Architecture 30

Participants in the Pamphlet Architecture 30 competition were asked to respond to the theme "Investigations in Infrastructure," and propose new directions for architecture, transportation, energy, cities, and agriculture at a continental scale. The winning entry, Coupling, imagined six daring projects: a high-speed rail system across the Bering Strait that also collects freshwater from the seasonal iceshelf; a decommissioned airport transformed into a geothermal data farm and agriculture site; thickening on/off ramps around "big box" stores into circular parking lots; a call to include landfills in the list of preserved open spaces; and a saline terminal lake turned into a water farm, recreational retreat, and habitat haven. Coupling argues that infrastructures behave as artificially maintained natural systems. Rather than a New Deal approach of massive engineering or iconic infrastructure, Coupling employs adaptable, responsive, small-scale interventions whose impacts are global in scale.

Participants in the Pamphlet Architecture 30 competition were asked to respond to the theme "Investigations in Infrastructure," and propose new directions for architecture, transportation, energy, cities, and agriculture at a continental scale. The winning entry, Coupling, imagined six daring projects: a high-speed rail system across the Bering Strait that also collects freshwater from the seasonal iceshelf; a decommissioned airport transformed into a geothermal data farm and agriculture site; thickening on/off ramps around "big box" stores into circular parking lots; a call toinclude landfills in the list of preserved open spaces; and a saline terminal lake turned into a water farm, recreational retreat, and habitat haven. Coupling argues that infrastructures behave as artificially maintained natural systems. Rather than a New Deal approach of massive engineering or iconic infrastructure, Coupling employs adaptable, responsive, small-scale interventions whose impacts are global in scale.

For thirty-seven years, Pamphlet Architecture's forward-thinking authors have challenged architecture's conventional wisdom with bold ideas enhanced by visually provocative design. With far-ranging topics including building and urban form, algorithms, machines, and music, each Pamphlet is unique to the individual or group that authors it. The competition for Pamphlet Architecture 35 offered an opportunity for architects, designers, theorists, urbanists, and landscape architects to produce a small manifesto for tomorrow. The competition winner, not announced at press time, reflects the rigor and excitement found throughout the competition's rich history.

In this volume, the latest addition to the award-winning Pamphlet Architecture series, the authors examine common architectural forms (chairs, doors, and walls) and programs (a cinema, a health club, a skyscraper) in order to dissect and reconfigure them. In the process they create ten new projects that draw their power from an oscillation between the recognizable and the surreal. Cleverly undermining the conventions and norms of contemporary architectural design, the authors pose a direct challenge to the seemingly endless search for new styles, arguing instead that the greatest potential for architecture in the twenty-first century rests on an imaginative examination of what we take for granted. Designed by authors, Situation Normal... weaves together text, photographs, and drawings. An introductory essay establishes the theoretical and historical position of the book.

The thirteen projects take as their subject a site of contested transportation infrastructure--the Sheridan Expressway. By proposing new typologies for this site, these studies seek to mediate the spaces in the city where local and regional meet. Referencing the introduction of the modern parkway into the Bronx, the grading of the Central Park transverse roads, and other works that have redefined the relationship between parks and roads, author Jonathan Solomon suggests a system by which large projects might again be built in American cities.

This project has been generously supported by Capital Partners. After the devastating earthquake in Haiti, on January 12, 2010, Steven Holl had the idea of devoting the next Pamphlet Architecture book to solutions for rebuilding the architecture and infrastructure of the country. Going back to the origins of the series, which was founded by Holl in 1977, Pamphlet Architecture 31: New Haiti Villages presents Steven Holl Architects' vision for a new way of building in Haiti, with contributions from leading structural engineer Guy Nordenson and Matthias Schuler of climate engineering firm Transsolar. To avoid making architecture that would just repeat the problems of the past, Holl asked the following questions to guide his design: 1. How should Haiti rebuild? 2. If the political corruption before the earthquake was problematic, what now? 3. Can urban/architectural expression be by Haitians? 4. Will outside engineers build pragmatic strongboxes? 5. Can the poetry of Haitis wind and sea, its colors and vegetation, its sky, guide planners and architects? Holl attempts to answer these questions with his idea for "Dense-Pack Villages," a type of courtyard housing that could be built with recycled concrete from fallen buildings and steel and would be hurricane- and earthquake-resistant. Each "village" could house approximately 200 occupants, and the courtyards would be filled with greenery and fruit trees. Holl proposes that these houses use solar cells on their roofs to provide electricity, allowing the villages to potentially operate off the grid. Water can be supplied from desalinization plants in each village, and also from new reservoirs, replacing the outdated reservoirs that were destroyed in the earthquake. The architectural ideas present in sketches, scaled drawings, and models are given more definite form with scientific analysis and advice from engineers Nordenson and Schuler. Nordenson, with his colleage Rebecca Nixon, advises on how to improve the durability and safety of new buildings in Haiti through improved construction and structural engineering techniques. Schuler gives numbers and dimensions to the plans to use solar power, water desalinization, and gray-water recycling in the Dense-Pack Villages.

Holl attempts to answer these questions with his idea for "Dense-Pack Villages," a type of courtyard housing that could be built with recycled concrete from fallen buildings and steel and would be hurricane- and earthquake-resistant. Each "village" could house approximately 200 occupants, and the courtyards would be filled with greenery and fruit trees. Holl proposes that these houses use solar cells on their roofs to provide electricity, allowing the villages to potentially operate off the grid. Water can be supplied from desalinization plants in each village, and also from new reservoirs, replacing the outdated reservoirs that were destroyed in the earthquake.