Unfrozen

Intro/Outro: “Skullduggery” by Steppenwolf

Discussed:

• The Richard J. Daley Collection archives at University of Illinois Chicago
• The Development Plan for the Central Area of Chicago, 1958
• Chicago as a gameboard, in which skyscrapers were chess pieces
• Arthur Rubloff
• The Field Building, 1934
• 860-880 Lake Shore Drive
• C.F. Murphy, the Zelig figure of Chicago architecture and real estate
• The State of Illinois Building > James R. Thompson Center > Google Center
• The Sears Tower and its land accumulation saga
• The John Hancock Center – the “car chase” scene in the book
• Jerry Wolman
• Carl Condit
• Modern Architecture: A Critical History - Kenneth Frampton
• The Power Broker – Robert Caro

Intro/Outro: “Territories” by Rush

Discussed:

• Hong Kong’s New Territories: Northern Metropolis and Lantau Island
• Greater Bay Area
• MTR
• Belt and Road Initiative
• China’s Debt-Driven Construction Binge > Skyscraper Ban
• TAZARA Railway – Dar es Salaam to the Zambian Copper Belt
• China in Africa - colonialism or globalization?
• Africa’s Urban Future: “Made in China”
• Gated cities in Angola and Kenya
• Exporting Special Economic Zones (SEZs) > Zambia
• Made in China > Made in Africa, Mexico
• You get what you pay for
• Vincent Lo – Shui On Group
• Ronnie Chan -- Hang Lung Group - 66 Projects
• The podium + tower model as export commodity, rising in Long Island City, Flushing and Jersey City
• Hudson Yards is very analogous to a Asian shopping mall
• Steven Holl - Sliced Porosity - Chengdu

Intro: “Born in East L.A.,” by Cheech & Chong

Discussed:

• The Cheech
• The Mercury (Union Bank, Getty Realty Building) – Claud Beelman, converted to residential in 2007
• Local Law 97 – New York City
• Empire State Building retrofit by Johnson Controls
• Ranking of NYC buildings for energy performance
• Shift of LEED from incentive-based program to code
• Concrete cage match: Walter Netsch vs William Pereira
• Consider also Max Abramowitz
• Boston City Hall
• Early recognition of embodied energy impact, 1976-1980: Energy Use for Building Construction, Richard G. Stein & Associates + Center for Advanced Computation at the University of Illinois
• New Energy from Old Buildings, National Trust, 1981

Outro: “Concrete,” by the Darkness

Intro/Outro: “Natural’s Not in It,” by Gang of Four

Discussed:

• Austria: Partecipazione / Beteiligung
• Switzerland: Neighbors
• South Korea: 2086: Together How?
• The Netherlands: Plumbing the System
• USA: Everlasting Plastics
• Bahrain: Sweating Assets
• UAE: Aridly Abundant
• Applied Arts Pavilion: Victoria & Albert Museum – Tropical Modernism
• Australia: Unsettling Queenstown
• Germany: Open for Maintenance
• Uzbekistan: Unbuild Together
• Czech Republic: The Office for a Non-Precarious Future
• Latvia: T/C LATVIJA (TCL)

              Intermezzo: “Lost in the Supermarket,” by The Clash

• Interview with curator Ernests Cerbulis
• Estonia: Home Stage

Canada: Not for Sale!!

              Intermezzo: “New Home” by Toro y Moi

              Interview with curators Matthew Soules and Adrian Blackwell

Despite its looming omnipresence, the Venice Architecture Biennale had very little material on virtual/augmented

First, Era Merkuri and Martin Gjoleka, principals of the Karlsruhe, Germany-based Heramarte, are the curators of the ⁠2023 Albanian Pavilion⁠, titled "Untimely Meditations: How We Learn to Live in Synthesized Realities." The project takes two real but highly adulterated 1950s public works projects in Tirana - the Dinamo Stadium and the Artificial Lake - and situates reimagined augmented-reality objects within them, projecting the results throughout the space at the Arsenale, and online.

Second, Chidi Nwaubani is the founder of Looty, a “virtual restitution project” in which a team of artists stages a “heist,” in masks and dark clothing, to (perfectly legally) scan detailed 3D images of looted artifacts from Africa now sitting in places such as the British Museum. The 3D images of such works as the Benin Bronzes and the Rosetta Stone are then converted into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), with 20 percent of the proceeds going to grants for young African artists.

Intro / Outro: “Untimely Meditations” by Shortwave Research Group

Intermezzo: “Heist” by Noisestorm

Copenhagen has long been a paragon in urban planning circles. Karsten Palsson, CEO of Palsson Urbanism, says it's under threat from commercial development interests and weakened government, and now is the time to rearticulate and potentially export the principles that made it a paragon in the first place. Unfrozen sits with the author of "How to Design Humane Cities - Public Spaces and Urbanity," and the new "Urban Block Cities - 10 principles for Contemporary Planning."

Intro/Outro: "Old Wine, New Bottles," by Silver Convention