randomosity

Atzinger Gästhaus - 12 December 2007 - 14:00
I happened across some notes I jotted down while enjoying some wonderful pork stew at this little restaurant.
Munich is rather wet this year. It is a bit of a dampener - literally. The thing about this place though is the wonderful bustle. There’s people out and about. Certainly at the times of day that I am. It’s not crazy crowded - that would bother me a tad - it’s what I would describe as comfortably kinetic and a very diverse crowd. I am in the university area of Schwabbing today and there is a very discernible undergrad aged presence, but not overwhelmingly so. There always seems to be a younger component about, but it tends to be younger than university age in the core. There seems to be less English spoken since I was last here. Not a bad thing, merely an observation. Am finding that I am struggling with German - this also more of a struggle than a decade ago. Strangely have been mistaken for French on a number of occassions - strange. Guess it’s why my research people thought I speak Chinese with a Korean accent ;-)
The architecture in the area is a strange dichotomy of kitschy-southern German Alpine - some more ornate with stucco or francy brick pediments and towers - opposing ultra-modern glass and steel brutality. The steel always dark with a bronzy patina. The food is all so rich. How do these people stay thin???

Naru Shiode from the University at Buffalo gave a spellbinding presentation on spatial-temporal analysis at the Centre for Spatial Analysis (CSpA) on Friday. Shiode is trained as architect and urban planner and finds himself in the Geography department at Buffalo. He has been associated with projects such as Digital Egypt and the Virtual Ryoanji projects exploring ancient historical reconstruction as well as time-based recremorphing. His current project is the 3D Buffalo project which allows a user to interact via a chronoslider that triggers time points for each building within a multi-block area surrounding downtown Buffalo. This project is only in its early stages, but the potential for historical analysis is tremendously promising.

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From the realm of ‘too far fetched’ to be believed comes word that members of the UX, a shadowy underground organisation, have been cleared of charges in their daring, but clandestine operation to restore an antique clock at the Patheon in Paris. According to UrbanResources, the UnterGunther is “Swiss-French urban explorers team whose activity is to restore the invisible parts of the heritage in total clandestinity.” This latest caper involved a year long process to secretly repair a huge clock in the Pantheon which had fallen into disrepair. Not only did they carry out this task undetected over the space of a year, they built a lounge within the dome of the Pantheon, wired into electrical circuits and even installed a networked computer, all under the unsuspecting nose of Pantheon staff. When the UnterGunther cell finished their restoration, they made the decision to reveal their work to ensure the clock received ongoing care. The Guardian has a story in English on their acquittal.
The group were charged with tampering with a lock (their sometime means of ingress and egress) and the head of security for the Pantheon took retirement. Despite the fact that the group has demonstrated the clock to have been fully restored, the staff at the Pantheon have, for undisclosed reasons, chosen not to wind or cause the clock to operate. Apparently the group is already at work on their next operation. Encroyable!

Speaking with Matt Leighninger this morning I was reminded of one of my best tips for those looking for offbeat sights in Paris - the military models at the Musée de l’Armée. The museum is a treasure. A grande promenade stretching from the Seine leads up to the building. The courtyards are filled with captured and antique canons…hundreds of them. The canons are often works of the craftsmen’s art. Inside the museum are amazing collections of all things military stretching from earliest times to the present. There are guided tours, expositions and of course Napoleon’s Tomb adjoins the museum proper in L’Eglise du dôme. The museum is enormous and can easily occupy the better part of a day for the day.
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Having just returned from one of my favourite cities in the world, I was fascinated to find a Paris Metro Virtual Experience. This media-rich site offers wonderful history of the Paris Metro and the opportunity to take a virtual tour with static images and rel-time soundtrack along a number of lines. Additionally, the author of the site has completed station by station architectural mosaics of particular lines. If you have ever had the opportunity to travel on the metro (arguably one of the most efficiently run systems in the world) this site may bring back some memories.
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There is a great discussion at Bricoleurbanism on the absence of people-scaled spaces in Toronto’s urban streetscape. The discussion takes as a starting point construction hoarding on two sides of the street near Bloor that inadvertently created a humane street scale not unlike that found elsewhere in the world.
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Those clever folks at the IATH at the University of Virginia are receiving much deserved accolades for their truly breathtaking digital model of ancient Rome. Rome Reborn 1.0 (and accompanying website) are visually stunning and the mainstream media are covering this with great detail. Billed as the largest digital model of an historic city ever undertaken, it provides researchers with the opportunity to virtually walk the streets in real time and in many cases wander inside and look around. The model was constructed by hand and then digitized over the past decade. This is a massive undertaking and what, aside for the scale of the undertaking, makes this of great import is the attention to making this a fluid work in progress.
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Sorry for the drought of postings of late. Things get in the way.
There’s a unique concept hotel opening at Gatwick in July. Modeled on the compact sleeping spaces that I have always associated with Asia, they provide what they term ‘cabins.’ The Yotel provide upscale, high quality space designed around human dimensions.
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(if this image is just a pretty palace, click refresh to reload the animated gif and enjoy a quick look at the rebuilding of the schloss)

I am always both fascinated and charmed to see an older building lovingly restored and doubly so when its role is thoughtfully reconsidered and creatively re-purposed. The magnificent ducal place in Braunschweig has been carefully reconstructed and redeveloped as part of a shopping arcade in the city centre. The palace itself was torn down in 1960 following years of gradual disintegration and bomb damage during the WWII that left much of the city centre devastated. Although remnants of the old palace were used in the reconstruction begun in 2005, the bulk of the construction material is new. Despite this, the effect overall effect of the reconstruction is gorgeous, and tribute to the craftsmanship of those involved. There have been a number of critics that feel that such a building should only be used as museum or a public non-commercial space. I heartily disagree.

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There’s a neat spot, a little off the beaten track, in Paris that I have some fond memories of. It’s an oasis, small in scale and slow in pace. It’s not the sort of place that you find in the tourist directories and its not enveloped by the legend of Paris vacationeering. Bercy Village is a trendy upscale redevelopment project in the 12th which features little shops, a cinema, bars and restaurants, situated within and without of a old wine market. Metro 14 - Cour St-Emilion lands you right in the village.
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