…makes for a considerable amount of construction noise.
$25 and not a hint of irony to get high and see the largest private real estate development in the USA under construction at Hudson Yards. Robert Plant would be proud.
Re-branding Red Hook
PRIME WATERFRONT LOCATION, CITY VIEWS.
Close to all amenities, including a large IKEA and the Gowanus Canal - America’s most polluted waterway - and just minutes from Manhattan or the trendier parts of Brooklyn by private transport, this area is ripe for redevelopment. Once named the “crack capital of America” by Life magazine, Red Hook boasts the largest public housing complex in Brooklyn, so you won’t need to worry about providing any affordable housing or social services. And it comes readymade with unique selling points - 17th century Dutch heritage, authentic post-industrial decay, charming cultural diversity, and the only full-frontal view of the Statue of Liberty in all New York City…
Enquire today. You’ll be Hooked.
The view from Smith & Ninth Street Station - looking north along the Gowanus Canal towards downtown Brooklyn
Underside of the Gowanus Expressway, connecting Red Hook with Manhattan via the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel
Mural opposite the New York Public Library in Red Hook
Crossing the picket line
Seemingly a long way from the manicured lawns of middle America, Brooklyn still makes room for the suburban enthusiast - evidenced by this tiny vegetable patch outside a café on Union Ave. But don’t be fooled! The shabby DIY aesthetic is deeply embedded in Williamsburg’s hip café culture. It becomes impossible to distinguish chic from naff, well-heeled from down at heel.
In truth this rarefied slice of suburbia denotes a form of gentrification so advanced that it’s hard to say which side of the ironic white fence you fall on. And when the teller rings up your total it can feel like you’re sitting directly on top of a pointy picket: on the first morning of the trip I parted ways with a painful $28 for the pleasure of a filter coffee, two pastries, and a small bag of coffee beans to bring back to my hosts…
The tiny veggie patch outside the cafe in Brooklyn where I learned a valuable lesson.
Rituals for sale
“Advertising is a means of contributing meaning and values that are necessary and useful to people in structuring their lives, their casual relationships, and their rituals”
- Frank, Thomas. 2000. One Market under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy. New York: Doubleday.
Quoting a pamphlet on account planning (ie. marketing strategy) Thomas Frank highlights the deployment of anthropological concepts - ritual, value, and meaning - in contemporary “marketing theory” as evidence that branding has become one of the primary means by which people in capitalist society construct our understandings of the universe. Brands are no longer simply markers of quality or familiarity - they are holistic, dynamic entities, defined as much by their target audience as by the commodities they represent.
The product and its consumer - the influencer and the influenced - have become inseparable. We are the brand.
Rituals - a Japanese cosmetics chain - suggests that its range of perfumes, soaps, and incenses will help us to discover deeper meaning in our everyday routines. Edgy street art outside their East Williamsburg store lends this claim an air of prophetic insight. What reads initially as a simple grammatical slip up “Rituals helps..” becomes, upon further inspection, a careful deployment of the brand name. A sub-functional bicycle reinforces the point, telling us of outlets in Paris, London and Amsterdam.
Introductory rite
Hello & welcome!
This fieldwork blog will record my activities as I venture from Cambridge to Brisbane and attempt to develop a research project through random acts of architecture. Over the coming six months, I hope it will fill up with posts detailing my efforts to gather the raw materials for a design thesis - photographs & film, drawings & models, site analyses & precedent studies, writing & conversation, links to useful resources, and reports on the various events and build projects with which I will be involved. These materials will be compiled into a project ‘atlas’, forming the basis for both a written argument and a schematic design proposal to be carried forward into the next phase of the project.
Links to the ‘atlas’ chapters and evolving design proposals will be posted as the fieldwork progresses. To kick things off, however, I will shortly post a selection of photos and accompanying reflections from a recent visit to the United States.
The researcher’s antennae