I just stumbled upon a new magazine on urbanism, including lots of critical texts with well known good names. MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) calls for submissions of each issue via its website. However the last issue is announced for Winter 2006 but the site is not updated yet.

It is good to have such a magazine which focuses not only the single artifacts of the architectural production, but the overall field where architects are actually should play. One wishes such a magazine and its alikes reach a wider community.

Sato Shintaro shows us Tokyo with its Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty in total silence. Magnifient photos of this crazy city took place in the gallery section of ArkiBlog.

Few people know that the founder of the famous razor blade company, Gillette, had utopian visions to build mega cities. Paul Maliszewski in his article printed in the Cabinet magazine’s 19th issue, explains this vision in detail.

King Camp Gillette, born in 1855, became very rich when he invented the first disposable razor blades. However, he had bigger ideals in mind. He published a book called The Human Drift in 1894, seven years before he founded his razor blade company.

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The Facility Architects director Claire Price says that they can produce energy from the sidewalks, streets etc. According to him, a lot of energy is wasted in the crowded urban areas. The movement and vibration created by thousands of footsteps in crowded streets or metro stations can be used to produce energy.

According to Wired, where this article is featured, “Price has charged Jim Gilbert, an engineering lecturer at the University of Hull, with developing the prototype system for capturing footfall. Gilbert is working with hydraulic-powered heel-strike generators, which he believes could be installed in the floors of busy public places like subway stations. Those stations typically capture the footfall of 20,000 commuters an hour during peak usage — multiplied by 5 to 7 watts a person, that’s more than enough to power a building’s lights for the day.”

Unknowingly, the architecture and building community is responsible for almost half of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions annually. Globally the percentage is even greater.

Combining the annual energy required to operate residential, commercial, and industrial buildings along with the embodied energy of industry-produced building materials like carpet, tile, glass, and concrete exposes buildings as the largest energy consuming and greenhouse gas emitting sector.

Architecture 2030, a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization, wants to attract the attention of the architectural community to this problem. They have a well-organized and convincing web site at www.architecture2030.org address.

It has been 20 years since the one of the biggest disasters mankind ever faced. When Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s reactor 4 was burnt and collapsed partially in 1986, radiaoactive materials started to contaminate the air and soil. The effects of the radioactive contamination is still alive around the region. The 180 tons of plutonium charged, melted lava with a half-life of around 24.000 years still lays inside the reactor 4 building. That means, this dangerous debris will exist there virtually forever until it loses its power. The same applies to the particules spreaded around to soil. The radioactivity of the soil until 20cm deep is still existing around the 30km of the Chernobyl Plant. People living around the region are not allowed to approach to the plant ,however the contamination carried by underground water and agricultural products still affects the future generations. The closest town to the reactor, Prypiat became a ghost town, which was evacuated immediatly after the accident in the reactor.
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Tokyo şehrinin altında yer alan ve “G-Cans” projesi adı verilen sarnıç ve su tahliye sistemleri, Japonya’nın akılalmaz inşaat çılgınlığına iyi bir örnek teşkil ediyor. Şehrin etrafındaki nehir yataklarının taşması gibi bir tehlikede suyu toplayıp uzaklaştırma amacı ile yapılan bu mega ölçekteki sarnıçlar yer altında 32 metre çapında 65 metreye varan derinliklere sahip silolardan, tahliye kanallarından ve saniyede 200 ton suyu tahliye edebilecek dev pompalardan oluşuyor. Daha çok fotoğrafa ve Japonca biliyorsanız daha detaylı bilgiye bu siteden ulaşabilirsiniz.

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Founded in 1995 by Raul Cárdenas Osuna in Tijuana, Mexico, TOROLAB is an interdisciplinary collective engaged in a series of experiments responding to the urban conditions of Tijuana. Their project SOS: Emergency Architecture addresses questions of survival, emergency and camouflage in the urban context.

TOROLAB’s SOS: Emergency Architecture proposes to rescue materials from the local milieu, what they term “an emergency architecture.” This interdisciplinary project represents a critical examination of the border condition, addressing irregular housing environments and potential spaces for reassessment and negotiation.

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İstanbul metropolünün dinamiklerini konu edinen ve bağımsız bir bilgi paylaşım ağı olma iddiası ile yayına başlayan Metropolistanbul, bu dinamikler üzerine üretilen yazılı, sözlü ve görsel tüm ürünleri sanal bir platformda bir araya getirmeyi amaçlamakta. Yeni görüş ve düşüncelerin yaratılmasına ve paylaşılabilmesine olanak sunmayı ve kentin dinamiklerinin ürettiklerini biriktirmeyi amaçlayan bu platformun ağırlıklı noktası üretilen bilgiyi arşivlemek ve yenilerini üretmek. Öte yandan Metropolistanbul’un aylık temalarla ürettiği bakış açıları yeni birikimler sağlayacak. İlk ayın teması ise 1 Mayıs.

Metropolistanbul’un Çalışma Grubu’nu Candan Çınar, Füsun Çizmeci, Ebru Omay Polat, Banu Çelebioğlu ve Tayfun Gürkaş oluşturuyor. Şimdilik Tolga Adınır, Ufuk Demirgüç, Boran Erem, Seher Güzelçoban, Esen Karol, Aykut Köksal, Hacer Kurt, Şenel Muhziroğlu, Burcu Mutlu ve Gülin Şenol ise katkı sağlayanlar.