Sunday, January 1, 2017

Midwest Taproots

1177 BCE

The Year (actually an era, but makes a snappier title) Civilization Collapsed (did that get your attention?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4


Viewer warning: another group of white people...
this time passing around a basketball at the University of Illinois
Science fact or fiction?

Change blindness (click along to activate the links)*

Sufficiency in our time, por que no
Wuppertal Institute for Klima, Environment and Energie
(in German and English with links to Japanese and further)


(a footnote * ftp://grey.colorado.edu/pub/oreilly/teach/prosem_highvis/Simons00.pdf

1.1.17

Monday, December 26, 2016

Solar Housing Parks, 1940s and 1950s, updated 8 March 2017_anniversary plus one

Updates: April 6, 2017

Re: Keck's House of Tomorrow, 1933-34 at the Chicago World's Fair then Crystal House and more (mid-1970s interview with Josh Kind) followed by "Will you love me tomorrow?" a good question from the Shirelles.

https://vimeo.com/207474565

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3irmBv8h4Tw 

Fred Keck and others designed and built solar-heated homes starting in 1940.  Two prime groupings are in Glenview and Glencoe, Illinois.

A few photos will illustrate: first from Glenview and next from Glencoe.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has recently added Keck building photos online from many eras. More to come.
Follow this link, then type Keck next the blue Go button.
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav=N:1135  

Also see Anthony Denzer's blog Solar House History including extensive resources section which continues to grow.  solarhousehistory.com/blog/ 

History researcher and activist, John Perlin interview, author of Let it Shine (New World Library 2013) inspired many works while riding a "bus in Jerusalem"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG662Yi9dCk





Saturday, December 24, 2016

democracy, struggle, society, architecture


Sullivan believed that art must become a value in democratic society that could stand beside business, politics, science and religion in shaping the mind and heart of America…what happened in architecture determined what happened in society.  “Therefore, by this light, the critical study of architecture becomes not merely the direct study of an art – but…the study of social conditions producing it; the study of a newly shaping type of civilization.”  …what we did with our buildings…determined how we related as citizens of a democratic community.
Culture and Democracy:  The Struggle for Form in Society and Architecture in Chicago and the Middle West during the Life and Times of Louis H. Sullivan, Hugh Dalziel Duncan
  

"Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies 
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground 
Falls the remorseful day." 

A.E. Houseman

...nevertheless another vimeo album
NB Experience of these vimeos may be a not-so-easily acquired 'taste' aided with a simultaneously mixed soundtrack of your choosing.
 
Keck Energiewende, Housing 
with this video link (clicking to advance clips) https://vimeo.com/album/4323792
Contact: localmediaarchive there at gee mail then another com

From the blog weeds-seeds-and-needs file:
Dynamic Ecology (with an inspired subtitle: multa novit vulpes)
https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/

A stalwart tribe:  Ocean Arks formerly New Alchemy Institute
http://www.oceanarksint.org/


And an unscheduled guest appearance from Germany
Bastian Hoffman
How to adjust an apartment to the natural outdoor temperature (winter)
Video, Farbe, Ton, 02:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfXbOtr37jQ&t=59s