Month: April 2003

Trouble at OMA

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The New York Times has yet another story on the misfortunes of OMA: Post Prada, a Design Darling Slims Down. But what’s the surprise? With the dot.com economy’s crash, one would think that the proponents of the ‘new managerialism’ would have seen the handwriting on the wall. Not yet apparently. And although Rem states that he prefers to reinvent rather than reassert, he doesn’t realize that in contemporary practice the first thing that must be subject to perpetual reinvention is the architect.

Network Centric Warfare

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If Le Corbusier argued that his urban plans allowed cities to survive firebombing and chemical attack (see the April 16 entry) and if the decentralized American city is partly the result of Cold War attempts to ensure survival of critical facilities after nuclear attack, then what might we imagine our contemporary urbanism might spawn? As various articles on this web site and recent work on audc’s site demonstrate, much of my current research investigates the role of fiber optics and networking technology in shaping today’s city. Well, as it turns out, the model for the Iraq war and one of the key factors in US superiority has been the development of a model of ‘network centric’ warfare. See this article, or this article, visit the Department of Defense’s Report to the US Congress or look at this massive twurled-world collection of links on infowar. Finally, check out this leaflet dropped by Coalition Forces on Iraq. An entire gallery of such leaflets is viewable here. Expect more this summer on the topic at varnelis.net

The Plan Voisin and War

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Paulette Singley sent me this oddly prescient text from Le Corbusier’s Precisions: “The Voison Plan for Paris; Buenos Aires” Finally, Mr. Daniel Serruys declared, in a lecture on Paris at the Geography Hall this spring to an audience of senators, of deputies, of city councilors, of manufacturers, that the Voison Plan was the only solution that dared to call for energetic measures, and that only far-reaching measures could prevent the immanent disaster. At the moment of printing this book, Lieutenant colonel Vauthier submits to me a work to be published by Berger-Levrault: The Aerial Danger and the Future of the Country. This study, written by a specialist in aeronautics attached to the Aerial Defense Headquarters, shows that the Voison Plan, but its high buildings, its wide spaces ITS PILOTIS, its parks with their ponds, ANSWERS POINT BY POINT the anguishing questions raised by the coming war, which will be AN AERIAL WAR, A CHEMICAL WAR. Here is an unexpected remark. Here are singularly serious conclusions. In substance, Lieutenant Colonel Vauthier concludes: “If the state does not take useful measures with urgency and unshakeable firmness, Paris will be simply and purely annihilated in a future war…”.” Le Corbusier Precisions