CHAnge?

Yesterday I got wind of an anonymous web page that criticizes the Chicago Housing Authority's current situation by taking aim at the city organization's latest ad campaign, "This is CHAnge". The group that also goes by the name Chicago Housing Authority claims that "This PR campaign, authored by the advertising giant Leo Burnett...[resulted] in a new brand identity: CHAnge," reflecting actual conditions: "Including massive organizational restructuring within CHA and the tearing down of all high-rise public housing buildings...Unfortunately, the priorities of CHA haven't changed at all, and public housing residents are still at the bottom of the list."



The image at left shows the real CHA's ad campaign, a South Side attorney quoted as saying, "Public housing is coming to a point I hoped it would - full circle." Alternately the fake CHA includes the line "Are tourists more important than the poor?" above a mug of the Mayor and a photo of Millennium Park's "bean". According to CHAos's site, poster size ads were installed in JC Decaux bus stops and other CTA locations around the city on May 27, all but one removed by noon that day.

While I find the play on the CHA's ad campaign clever and a bit humorous (they even copy the CHA's own web page almost to the letter, making it difficult for me to keep track of each, perhaps a dangerous move that may spell disaster for this anonymous page), I can't really find the effort having any significant impact or leading to any real CHAnge. But the CHAos web page also includes information on the CHA's latest "Plan for Transformation", as well as Resources and Resident Voices, pages with information that may at least educate people on the history and current state of public housing and eventually lead to worthwhile change.

Update 06.10: The Chicago Reader has a feature on CHA's mock advertising (in PDF format).

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Autobus Station in Casar de C�ceres, Spain by Justo Garc�a Rubio.

The updated book feature is Kengo Kuma: Selected Works, by Botond Bognar.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

2005 San Diego AIA Awards
Land+Living's coverage of "many quality projects."

delete!
A large installation in Vienna from June 6-20 that deletters the urban landscape. (via Art MoCo)

Perspect 37 Poll
What is the Portrait of a Famous Architect? You decide. (via Archinect)

Beyond Criticism
Some required reading at Pixel Points

Lost in Time

As the exploration of abandoned places becomes more and more popular - or at least more and more documented and shared - a plethora of quality photography on this subject is hitting the internet. Moody images of an abandoned Japanese amusement park circulated among blogs and the like about a month ago. Now we have "Lost in Time", a gallery of over 800 photos in 30 albums, featuring a diverse range of places and spaces (even a topless fashion shoot that I'll let you find on your own). The specifics are lost on me as the site is in Russian, but the pictures speak for themselves.



(via del.ici.ous)

Update 06.06: Things Magazine links to some more Russian buildings in abandoned and unfinished states, particularly Abandoned.

reCompete

The AIA Chicago Young Architect's Forum is currently accepting entries for reThink/reDesign/reCycle, a two-phase juried competition that seeks proposals for an ecologically intelligent, urban recycling receptacle. reThink/reDesign/reCycle aims to generate new and outstanding responses to Chicago's public recycling challenges.

In other words, the Mayor needs your help to fix his ailing, "Blue-bag" recycling program, and calling on designers for free* ideas these days is pretty darn irresistible. The two-phase competition asks entrants to "re-investigate the process of recycling in its entirety, from the material manufacturing process to the consumption choices made by individuals to the existing recycling infrastructure and its role in the collection process." Piece o' cake. And you've got six weeks, starting......now!



*Early registration before the June 24 deadline is $25; after is $35.

Don't Forget the Coffee

Happy Doughnut Day!

An Anniversary of Sorts

St. Louis's Riverfront Times covers a reunion of Pruitt-Igoe residents, the 28th since the destruction of the infamous housing project in that city's north side. Designed by Minoru Yamasaki years before he left his ultimately short-lived imprint on New York's skyline with the World Trade Center towers, these other twins (the Pruitt and Igoe complexes were bisected by Division Street) became a symbol of Modern architecture's death upon their implosion, not even twenty years after they opened. But like most ideological statements, facts were ignored, particularly the actual living conditions in the project as told by the residents, many who cherished their time there. RFT's feature includes conversations with residents who reunite every year to celebrate their time together years ago, a refreshing take on an oft-abused (ideologically) place that is long but definitely worth reading.



Some facts:

:: Completed in 1956.
:: Consisted of 33, 11-story buildings on 57 acres (23 hectares).
:: Total of 2,870 units to house 12,000 low-income residents.
:: Designed featured "skip-stop" elevators that stopped at every three floors, with stairs accessing the unserved floors.
:: Demolition began March 16, 1972; ends 1974 (or 1976, depending on sources).

Some links:

:: "The Case History of a Failure", published in December 1965's Architectural Forum.
:: Wikipedia's entry.
:: "Why They Built the Pruitt-Igoe Project" by Alexander von Hoffman.
:: Excerpts from Oscar Newman's Defensible Space, with illustrations.
:: "Pruitt-Igoe and the End of Modernity".
:: Aerial view of site as it sits today.

LANDed Butterflies

Following up on a post last week about the LANDed exhibition in Tulsa, some people commented on the lack of completion of some of the pieces. Here's some images of one of the completed works: Butterflies by Della Valle + Bernheimer.