Photo from Storefront for Art and Architecture flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

Continuing my summary of Postopolis! LA (read the first part here) I have come to the realization that my evil computer doth conspires against me. Pondering this I think one reason I would wish to be independently wealthy would be just so I could take a hatchet to the digital demon and not worry about being unable to replace it. Needless to say I won – this time, and below are the presenters I was able to catch on the Friday of Postopolis! LA.

If you are interested in reading in-depth about a particular presenter or Postopolis! LA itself, check out the presenter’s web site or one of the blogger-hosts’ sites (Plataforma Arquitectua, Mudd Up!, We Make Money Not Art, Subtopia, City of Sound or BLDGBLOG).

Early Friday I finally decided to avail myself of one of Art Weekend’s numerous events (it was at Sci-Arc and was about the impending convergence of Graphic Design and Architecture into a hybrid called, Graphitecture). Headed from Sci-Arc to the Standard along First Street, I paused momentarily to gawk at the new Police headquarters, which together with Cal Trans and Disney Concert Hall now give the street this futuristic feel.

The Standard rooftop teemed with people casting off the yoke of yet another work week, ridding themselves of its stresses by drinking expensive drinks in plastic wine-glass facsimiles. Armed with drink several were peering cautiously round the side of the wall to see what the art-geeks were up to as I moved past and looked for an empty seat.

I was not getting any better at making it to the event on time – fact this time I completely missed the first speaker, Michael Downing of the LAPD and got there as the crowd bade farewell with a round of applause. I later heard that he spoke about blanketing downtown with cameras – Ben Cerveny’s talk from yesterday came to mind, and if you read Part I you know I abhor all these artifacts of Big Brother-ism. Maybe this recession will stall that – at least for a while.

Photo from Storefront for Art and Architecture flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

Next was an American, Bryan Boyer, who worked for the Finnish government in a department who’s goal was the promotion of innovation in Finnish society, using its resources to bridge that gap between thinking about something and actually making it a reality. Their newest project Helsinki Design Lab 2010, came about when Helsinki’s port just up and moved, leaving a third of the city ripe for redevelopment and an opportunity to do something truly innovative. Bryan has been on a world tour of major design cities fostering interest and getting ideas for a project not solely about architecture, but which encompasses sustainability and economic ideas.

Ari Kletzky has a passion for those forlorn traffic islands stranded amidst seas of asphalt. He founded Islands of LA and over the years has organized various activities on islands such as tether ball, picnics, posting art traffic signs, and the Islands of LA National Park. The goal being not to have huge events but rather repeat events, getting people to use these spaces. One incident he related was when he planted tomatoes on some, made salsa with the harvest, got a Mariachi band, and had a fiesta on an island. Confrontation seems expected, in this case a city worker who said he couldn’t be planting tomatoes on the islands; which raises the question of just what is and is not allowed on these islands – who owns public space?

Graphic from the Stamen Design site.

Founder of Stamen Design, Eric Rodenbeck, picked up where Ben Cerveny left off, elaborating on their work with maps. Enormous amounts of data mapped to dynamic maps, and relations inferred. In one map the position of cabs were plotted so you could see trends depending on the time of day. Another showed the time taken to get to the Olympic Stadium in London and property prices. One interesting project was their innovative use of Modest maps (which Stamen helped develop) to create a map of the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art. If you find these maps as cool as I do then check out more of them on the Stamen web site.

Matthew Coolidge, director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation (which shows how various activities affect our landscape) showed how the oil industry affected the Texan landscape. Most dramatic was when he showed an aerial video of the area known as the Houston Petrochemical Corridor. A constant parade of enormous refineries, storage tanks, shipping facilities and the National Reserves (a gigantic field with “concrete helicopter pads” – but with immense tanks of oil under each “concrete pad”). Matthew did not show all 20 minutes of the video but it was enough to show the huge impact of this industry and makes one wonder what would happen to all this when we finally go off fossil fuels. Its not like they can just reuse these specialized refineries or tanks for say artist’s lofts – well maybe the tanks.

Photo from Storefront for Art and Architecture flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

My last talk of the night before racing to the subway station was Christopher Hawthorne, the Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic. Recently in Dubai, he gave a slideshow of his pictures projected onto the wall now that it was dark, while around us blazed the lights of downtown. The economic downturn was especially evident here, the city unusually quiet devoid of the noise of construction, half-completed skyscrapers were everywhere and the population steadily decreases as foreign workers leave daily. Christopher described the situation in Dubai as the result of an elaborate Ponzi scheme set in motion in a bid to reinvent a city that didn’t have much oil resources. Now one could only wonder if Dubai will be able to reinvent itself once again (or become a science-fiction-like deserted city in the middle of the desert).

This time I came prepared for the cold weather with gloves and a thick coat and though I left Postopolis! LA very tired after a long day, it was just so interesting that I didn’t mind one bit.

Read Part 1 / Read Part 3