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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU – magazine on urbanism #11 – CLEAN URBANISM

Download the new Call for Submission – Poster for Clean Urbanism and post it in your faculty!

When it comes to Clean Urbanism – i.e. an urbanism that is dedicated to minimizing both the required inputs for a city of energy, water, and food as well as its waste output of heat, air pollution as CO2, methan, and water pollution – a lot of proposals have been made recently for the building of so-called “eco-cities” that produce their own energy from the wind, the sun, bio-fuel, or recycled waste. But it has often been denied that such sources of energy, being integrated directly into cities, are highly inefficient, very expensive, and in the case of wind energy, very noisy. Nevertheless, wind turbines in an urban realm, for example, nowadays feature in almost every urban competition entry that requires sustainable energy concepts. Solar panels on rooftops have become state of the art on innumerable new building designs, however inefficient and expensive they are.

The question is: how might we achieve a Clean Urbanism that is socially, economically, and politically, but also environmentally correct? In the final analysis, what kind of soap or detergent do we need to achieve true Clean Urbanism? How can we achieve a Clean Urbanism that does not only look clean, but really is clean? How can the know-how that has been sucessfully acquired on the architectural level over the last 2 decades, be transferred and applied to the urban level? How could cities be organized, orientated in a more intelligent way to achieve Clean Urbanism? How might Clean Urbanism become more than just a lable to brand a city? How could we smarten-up existing cities and transform them into clean cities? How does clean architecture differ from clean urbanism? What does cleaniless actually mean on an urban scale? How can Clean Urbanism be affordable for everybody and become a global concept not only for the upper classes? How could we ultimately save our planet by changing our cities with Clean Urbanism?

This issue of MONU is meant to initiate an advanced discussion and stimulate new and fresh ideas surrounding those abovementioned questions to discover and increase our understanding of how Clean Urbanism could actually work. How can Clean Urbanism become more than just adding greenery onto buildings? How might we zoom out and acquire a global view on Clean Urbanism without getting lost in useless details?

We invite serious scientific data-based analyses, critical essays, fearless projects, audacious art projects, and brave photography on the topic of “Clean Urbanism” for our next issue of MONU. The scope cannot be wide enough. Ideas and abstracts should be sent to [email protected] by the end of May 2009. MONU #11 will be published in the summer of 2009.

Back in LA

Estare en Farm Lab -Los Angeles presentando Here is Tijuana junto con Fiamma y Bill Kelly este viernes. See you there!

Mas info @ FarmLAB

Farmlab Public Salon
Fiamma Montemezolo + Rene Peralta + Bill Kelley, Jr
+ Friends
Friday, March 6, 2009 @ Noon
Free Admission

It’s Here Tijuana all over Again

En la librería chilanga_Gandhi de la zona rió se esta vendiendo el libro Here is Tijuana por solo 100 pesos. Buy it now!

El Nuevo Monumento de la Globalizacion

Se esfumo mucha lana junto con el ego del arquitecto (rem), pero lo bueno fue que el edificio no estaba habitado. Mas Info Aqui-Dezeen

Información sobre la Maestría en Arquitectura de Woodbury University en Los Angeles que inicia en otoño del 2009 y donde también estaré participando como profesor. Mas info- clik it!

Acabo de volver a toparme con mi libreta de apuntes que use en Londres de 1995 al 96.
Aqui van algunas ideas que escuche por primera ves en mis clases.

Prof. Paul Hirst
Historiagraphy of Architecture

Nothing can be known unless it has something to define itself against.
There is no pure conciensness / it depends on something
Things develop through contradiction
Freedom does not consist on pure choice. Freedom is rational, therefore you have choices. Choices are irrational.

Prof. Mark Cousins
Seminar on Method

Where is a building?

Buildings are mental therefore they are everywhere
The “site” is an effect of architecture to make a site.
The site is a dimension of a building.
There can be no relation between object and subject of desire because we live in a post-kantian world, a apost-freudian world.

and my favorite:

To say a bldg is a bldg because of its materiality, is childish. Are we water because humans are made 70% of the liquid????

El Intelectual Mexicano – para que sirve??

An intellectual class marginalized from the digital and genomic revolutions can help preserve the past, but it will be hard presses to help build the future.

I have only admiration for these great individuals and thousands of other Mexican intellectuals. But I am concerned that as a class, they have almost completely ignored science and technology.
The role of an intellectual class subsidized by a poor society should be, at least in part, to interpret, develop, and transmit key knowledge. Mexico should continue to support and revere great historians, musicians, painters, poet and writers. But the inteligencia as a whole has to wake up and foster the development of science and technology within its rarified realm.

Intellectuals must be among the first to understand, debate, create and transmit a new dominant language. Today the dominant language is Microsoft. Tomorrow’s will be genetics.

Juan Enriquez en Revista, Harvard Review of Latin America, Fall 2001

Plugged-IN St. Louis

A principios de semana estuve en la Universidad de Washington en St. Louis Missouri. El primer día que llegue estaba muy agradable el clima, fresco pero con sol. El día siguiente todo cambio de repente la temperatura bajo y empezó a nevar – el frió me recordó aquellos años que viví en Londres, pero mis huesos ya no están para soportar esos climas. El viaje lo hice con Oscar Romo, del Estuario de Tijuana en Imperial Beach, arquitecto y ecologista con mucho trabajo en Tijuana sobre medio ambiente. Oscar era el cliente del proyecto que íbamos a revisar, yo fui de jurado y a organizar el curso de verano que imparto para el 2009 aquí en Tijuana. Los trabajos fueron buenos pero como en todas partes hay de buenos a buenos. Me pidieron quedarme un día más para poder estar en las presentaciones de otros cursos. Me toco estar en el taller del Arq. Zeuler Lima, formando parte del grupo que evaluó los proyectos y para mi sorpresa también estaba integrado por Denis Crompton ex -miembro de archigram _ yes I felt like a groupie! Crompton también fue maestro invitado y tuve la oportunidad de ver los trabajos de sus alumnos. Como ven en las fotos – se nota una fuerte nostalgia por el Plug-in City.



A principios de Febrero se presentaran los trabajos de Washington así como el proyecto de mis estudiantes de Woodbury aquí en Tijuana. Más información en enero.

Sam Fox – School of Architecture

Maqueta cortada con laser e información del terreno ubicado en Los Laureles, Tijuana.

Estudiantes y Maestros en la sala de expo.

Los trabajos de los alumnos de Denis Crompton

Computer mouse es Generation X


primer mouse inventado por Douglas Engelbart en 1968

mas info en Wired

So last century

Esto me recuerda una discusión que tuve con Miguel Robles y Mario deVega en mi vieja oficina de la federal. Aferrados a un ” Neo-DADA”

Estamos viviendo un asunto extraordinario: una generación multitudinaria de artistas sin arte. Una legión sigue a este movimiento repitiendo sus plegarias a san Duchamp y perpetuando algo de lo que sus creadores afirmaban: “las obras dadá no deben durar más de cinco minutos”. Los seguidores son la tumba del movimiento, por eso no logran aportarle nada. En el performance es más evidente esta contradicción: algo que tendría que ser efímero ya se estancó en los museos.

Leer todo el articulo aqui: http://impreso.milenio.com/node/8505694