class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # War, Technology & Innovation ## Reinforced concrete ### Jack McDonald ### 2019-11-19 --- class: inverse # Opening Discussion .question[ How has war/warfare shaped the architecture of the place you grew up in? ] ??? Notes for the discussion Link to images? --- class: inverse # Lecture Outline .pull-left[ Literature Search Feedback ] .pull-right[ - Concrete and the Built Environment - Designing and Imagining Technology - War in the Age of Urban Humanity ] ??? Weekly Course Admin Notes go here --- class: inverse # Part 1: Concrete and the Built Environment ??? /// --- # Urbanism .pull-left[ > The concept of the urban associated with the urban age thesis is used to refer to so many divergent conditions of population, infrastructure and administrative organization that it loses any semblance of analytical coherence. Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid, _The 'Urban Age' in Question_ ] .pull-right[   ] ??? Brenner/scmidt quote p.18 --- # The Built Environment .pull-left[ .picblock[  ] ] .pull-right[  ] -- > [Suburbs] represent the optimum of what people want. There's a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they're terrifying, because they are the _death of the soul_ ... _This_ is the prison this planet is being turned into. J.G. Ballard ??? Buildings reflect culture, politics, threats (and more!) "You are how you sleep" What is the built environment and why does it matter? How do building materials matter in war? Culture, buildings and infrastructure --- # Engineering Modernity .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[  ] .medium[ > The Crystal Palace was not so much a particular form as it was a building process made manifest as a total system, from its initial conception, fabrication and trans-shipment, to its final erection and dismantling. Kenneth Frampton, _Modern Architecture_ ] ??? Materials as limits to imagination Skyscrapers and thinking beyond prior limits Features of concrete buildings, factories Needs for individuals --- # Reinforced Concrete .pull-left[ .picblock[  ] ] .pull-right[  ] ??? Origins of cement Reinvention Reenforcement and tension designs --- # Craft Concrete > As ideas of systematic and scientific management gained credibility within many manufacturing contexts, business owners mechanized and subdivided production tasks. Decisions about product direction or design were removed from the shop floor or, in the case of construction, the work site. -- > In construction, many traditional craft-based building practices were gradually being replaced by routinized procedures. The diversified skills of carpenters or masons trained in the apprentice system held little attraction for most modern construction firm owners, and divisions between the roles of construction workers and managers—who could be contractors or firm owners—began to evolve accordingly. Amy E. Slaton, _Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930_ ??? --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .pull-left[ Consider how we have discussed the role of ideas in this course, and the way that they shape the use/deployment of technologies and innovations: ] .pull-right[ .large[ How might the way we imagine the possibilities of future technologies shape or constrain technological innovation? ] ] ??? /// --- class: inverse # Part 2: Designing and Imagining Technology ??? /// --- # Imaginaries and Technology .pull-left[ .medium[ > STS's earlier preoccupations with logic and epistemology have been supplemented or, indeed, replaced with a much broader agenda that includes research on aesthetics, values, and emotions. Maureen McNeil et al, _Conceptualizing Imaginaries_ > Industrialists rarely discussed the appearance of their physical plants in terms more specific than _modern, up-to-date, attractive, economical,_ and _efficient_. Amy E. Slaton, _Reinforced Concrete_ ] ] -- .pull-right[  > The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. William Gibson, _Neuromancer_ ] ??? Why do people care about imagination? Aesthetic dimension of Technology Politics baked in? --- # Concrete, Bakelite, and Plastics .left-column[    ] .right-column[ > Thus, the cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood. Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first-century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay. Mike Davis, _Planet of Slums_ ] ??? Davis quote p.19 Materials as a functional limit on imagination Material creativity Super-flexible materials --- # Design and Architecture .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[  ] ??? Architecture and histories of design COncrete and architectural modernism Fascist visions of future Brutalism --- # The Power Politics of Planning .pull-left[  Robert Moses was never elected to public office, and yet... ] .pull-right[ .medium[ > The ruin was a process. It began in the late 1950s and 1960s, when the center of the Bronx was blasted and bulldozed to build the Cross Bronx Expressway. > I invented a word for this process: URBICIDE, the murder of a city. Did I really invent it? Once you said it, it seemed obvious enough. But how do people in a murdered city live? Marshall Berman, _Emerging from Ruins_ ] ] ??? Famous NYC story of baked in Politics Way of seeing politics of society in planning (or lack thereof) Standards and safety inspections --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[ What might the study of buildings and building materials tell us about contemporary war and security? ] ??? /// --- class: inverse # Part 3: War in the Age of Urban Humanity ??? /// --- # Conflict and Concrete .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[  ] .small[ > Nature is doing her best to reclaim these buildings at last, with their concrete shells juxtaposed with swallowing sand and choking bushes, vines and undergrowth. They serve, then, as metaphors of both victory and gradual decline at one and the same time. Dominic Bradbury ] ??? Bradbury quote from here: https://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/22/richard-brine-photography-essay-concrete-pillboxes-second-world-war/ Fortification in age of concrete Verdun Atlantic wall again Explosive weapons and ICBM silos Conflict legacies - concrete shelters --- # Urban Warfare .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[  ] .medium[ > In response to the situation, the US forces basically engaged in siege warfare. But atypical to historic examples, instead of attacking to break through fortified wall, they imposed the siege on the enemy by building walls. John Spencer, _The Most Effective Weapon on the Modern Battlefield is Concrete_ ] ??? > Progressive collapse results from the inability of the structure to bridge over a local failure. Bilal S. Hamad, _Evaluation and repair of war-damaged concrete structures in Beirut_ Urban warfare in age of concrete Rebuilding destroyed cities Fragility of REFconcrete Concrete barrier walls in baghdad https://mwi.usma.edu/effective-weapon-modern-battlefield-concrete/ --- # Urbicide .pull-left[ .picblock[  ] ] .pull-right[  ] > Everyday urban life everywhere is thus stalked by the threat of interruption: the blackout, the gridlock, the severed connection, the technical malfunction, the inhibited flow, the network- unavailable notice. Stephen Graham, _Cities Under Siege_ ??? Graham quote p.265 What does it mean to wipe out a city? (Old times) WW2 and city destruction Hue and Aleppo Destroying city infrastructure --- # Defensive Architecture .left-column[    ] .right-column[ > even the most law-abiding citizen can stand to learn a thing or two from the urban-scale cat-and-mouse game of cops and robbers, who share this one fundamental strategy: not just to see the city as it is, but to see the city as it could be—then forcing those possibilities to happen. It is burglars and police, not architects or urban planners, who most readily and consistently show us these unseen possibilities, these other routes and spaces hidden in some unrealized dimension of the metropolis. Geoff Manaugh, _A Burglar's Guide to the City_ ] ??? From fortification to silent counter-design Homeless spikes, to the ring of steel Burglar book!!!