Hot Dog Issue in Battery Park, NYC

No matter the community is raising voice against the newest 100 dollars fine for walking the off-leashed dogs in Battery Park's "Great Lawn", the Financial District Committee does not seem to pull back their decision, either, and say they stand for what their Constituents want. For the community it looks like an overall fencing off and prohibition of dogs, since "There’s no place within C.B. 1 where a dog is allowed to walk on grass".

Voices are being heard about the installing a dog run as a possible solution: Magnificent new opportunity for some more regulations to act in accordance to, and supply bureaucratic bodies with some more jobs!

It's Chropping (Christmas&shopping) time!

Apparently, November 22nd was a bad day for New York stock exchange, and the superstition always comes in when a question of life and death is in the game. So, the elves (mostly blond ones, obviously) from OfficeMax came in to cheer up the stocks and make them, eh, rise?

Thanks, Deepa, for the link.

I am not busy enough to have a city break

To break this silence that I negligently afforded by adjusting myself to the job and house market circumstances in the UK the last two months, I have to start with my most recent experience.

Being lucky enough to spend four days at the World Travel Market in ExCel, London Docklands, last week, I have a picture story from my phone to tell; and apart from sharing my fatigue with the rest of the financial labour workforce on DLR those days. The latter experience is equally traumatic, but I will start now from the impressions of how national stands at the Fair produced the pictures of the imagined land on their territories.

I deeply admire the inventiveness to make an asset out of the desert, but there is a very funny combination of the 'serious' financial districts' models and the leisure resorts with architects like Frank Gehry pushed to the fore, to securitize (and I am not sure if I should use that word here, but try thinking of it metaphorically) the playfulness of the whole project or the high art values.
On the stand of United Arab Emirates you could take a picture of yourself in one of the luxury cabin aircraft chambers with the tacitly charming stewardess. Apart from that work&pleasure principle, you could have a pure exoticized European-looking lady playing with an eagle in her hands, happily posing for the visitors of the fair (who are, to stress that - also the businessmen fellas from the other countries, as the Fair is not open for the citizens and average mortals). White, beautiful and mute, I bet they had a message here to share between the lines.

Please, enjoy the pictures, as what is documented after the crash says completely the opposite. The building sites in Abu Dhabi have been abandoned for months now and there is only sand and security awaiting for the glitzy towers and ever new airports. Sorry for the blurriness, it is a result of my flirting with the treasury keepers in order to mask my disgust by the engulfing amount of fake Ives Klein around.

Inependant. critical. free. rigorous. productive.

I am very excited to attend one more in series of critical urban festivals - TINAG 2010.
Therefore, I will re-post here some of the scheduled talks, film screenings, armchair sessions, discussions, exhibitions, that will all take place 21st - 24th October, in an amazing community building - Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury Street, Brick Lane.

This year's theme is The Corporation, and it brings the different forms of interrogating the Financial Districts around the world, This blog is created as a support and source for the further research on the topic, with the intention to build up a sustainable archive over the time.

This Is Not A Gateway festival has been organized, coordinated and created by Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield, three years ago. Read more about the idea behind the "Glastonbury of urbanism" in the interview by Tim Abrahams for Blueprint magazine.

I propose you to hear the proposal, or rather an absence of the proposal of what to do in the time of crisis. crisis of capitalism, or capitalism as a crisis. It is made by Levent Kerimol and Fiona Davies and I invite you to read it in full here. And a short excerpt:

"Financial districts are not falling apart or becoming redundant. The financial crisis does not demonstrate a failure of capitalism. Recession is a normal part of capitalism. Capitalism is crisis."

Come share your ideas!

Exhibition: The Rise of Wall Street

23 Wall Street, JP Morgan Building (built during the construction peak: 1928-1931)


Fortune Magazine, Wall Street 1930


Theodore Muller, New York et Brooklyn: Vue Prise au dessus de la batterie; c. 1850.


Skidmore Owings Merrill design project for Stock exchange high-rise, 2000




While downloading slowly The Wall Street:Money Never Sleeps, I came across the ongoing exhibition in Skyscraper Museum, New York, showing the historical development of New York's financial district.
In the introductory words you can find on the website it is said that: "The exhibit explores how high stakes in architecture paralleled financial speculation at the heart of the capital of capitalism." Enough said for those that are still questioning in which way Architecture is carrying the capitalism's torch. Speaking of which, this animation of Madelon Vriesendorp's illustrations for Delirious New York (Koolhaas' praise of Manhattan) may look less a statement and more a funny comment to it.
For those of us across the pond - the website displaying pictures of: models, drawings and documentary photos, is quite informative. However, the atmosphere of the uncertain '30s after the Great Crash is probably the best described again by building actions of constructing and deconstructing the towers of Manhattan.

fishing the press on Billingsgate

by Matthew Lindop








The latest news say the porters of historical Billingsgate market, dating from 1327, handed in the petition to the Mayor of London against City of London Corporation's intention to withdraw the old byelaws. The intention to introduce new bye-laws, their union,Unite, claims, would 'destroy this important market'.

Although the porters are supported by some important figures as Ken Livingstone and Harry Redknapp, City of London seems determined about its future, ensuring the new bye laws are only opening greater job opportunities, and the old ones are revoked for not being modern enough (dating from Victorian times). The new ones are defended as more competitive. Knowing the market has already been relocated from the historical building (built in 1876 by John Mowlem, designed by Sir Horace Jones) to the building complex close to Canary Wharf in 1982, the changes are clearerly the reflection of Corporation's demand for catching up with the sign of the times.

Fashion of Occupation

Lehman Brothers tower, London, 2008


Lehman Brothers, New York


Ex Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Severin "Dick" Fuld

Lehman Brothers' employees may have hurriedly moved out from bank's property two years ago in Canary Wharf, but, art pieces from their corporate collection are only to be seen on 29 September at an PWC administrated auction called "Lehman Brohters: Artwork and Ephemera". In August in New York a similar event included Damien Hurst's and Takashi Murakami's works, while for the forthcoming London one PWC hopes to raise £2m.

Apart from this clutching at straws, their old building itself in London, will probably serve for another investment bank's headquarters. JP Morgan Chase & Co. decided to move in, as they said, perfectly designed building with the facilities such a bank needs, instead of financing to build a new one (abandoning the previous 1.5 bn project). Lehmans' estate has been opened in 2004, by Mr Gordon Brown himself, expressing the highest hopes in the financial sector's I will not speculate here if this indirectly shows that JP's senior advisor himself, former UK prime minister, Mr Tony Blair, at least at that point finds a common ground with his successor.

Considering tightening up the belt in the building sector, giving up on corporational architectural landmarks or flashy new sustainable eco design seems to be a trend lately. Maybe the vintage look, and architects' dream of reusable, flexible office space has finally entered the City's fashion as another Sustainable. It certainly still shows a sustainability in expansion, just with a different orchestration.

I am curious to see if Madonna's and Guy Ritchie's charity will help the bankrupt bank in couple of days.