Influx Insights Tag Feed: architecture

a real example of constant change- new york city

Influx Insights — 2008-09-15T19:42:06Z

A fascinating piece in New York Magazine on the evolving architecture of New York city focusing in on the changes over the past fifteen years. If anyone was looking for a great example of being able to thrive and survive in an era of constant flux, New York is a great one.

"Our city is molting.

Bricks flake away. So do brittle fire escapes, terra-cotta encrustations, old paint, cracked stoops, faded awnings, sash windows, and stone laurels fashioned a century ago by Sicilian carvers. New York is shucking off its aging walk-ups, its small and mildewed structures, its drafty warehouses, cramped stores, and idle factories. In their place, the city is sprouting a hard, glistening new shell of glass and steel. Bright, seamless towers with fast elevators and provisional views spring up over a street-level layer of banks and drugstores. In some cities, a building retains the right to exist until it’s proved irredeemable. Here, colossal towers are merely placeholders, temporary arrangements of future debris. New York lives by a philosophy of creative destruction. The only thing permanent about real estate is a measured patch of earth and the column of air above it. The rest is disposable.

And the metamorphosis has sped up. In the past fifteen fat years, more than 76,000 new buildings have gone up, more than 44,000 were razed, another 83,000 were radically renovated—a rate of change that evokes those time-lapse nature films in which flowers spring up and wither in a matter of seconds. For more than a decade, we have awakened to jackhammers and threaded our way around orange plastic netting, calculating that, since our last haircut, workers have added six more stories to that high-rise down the block. Now that metamorphosis is slowing as the economy drags. Buildings are still going up, but the boom is winding down. Before the next one begins is a good time to ask, has this ferment improved New York or eaten away at the city’s soul?"

Posted by Ed Cotton

branding a stadium

Influx Insights — 2007-09-26T14:21:06Z

Sir Norman Foster is about to embark on a renovation project for one of the most famous soccer stadiums in the world, FC Barcelona's Camp Nou.

Foster plans to skin the stadium in the club's colors ensuring that it becomes an illuminated beacon for miles around.

In essence, Foster is branding the Camp Nou.

Look for others stadiums to follow and for fights to break out with the companies that own the naming rights.

Posted by Ed Cotton

is postopolis! a model for the next great marketing conference?

Influx Insights — 2007-05-29T10:27:48Z

If you are intersted in buildings, urban planning, landscape and design, Postopolis! could be the thing for you. It's a three day event curated by four bloggers- Bldgblog, City of Sound, Inhabitat and Subtopia. It's an ecletic event with lots of a great selection of interesting speakers and even a pecha kucha session.

Postopolist starts today at Storefront in NYC.

It looks intriguing and could be a new way to organize a conference. We like the idea that it's not a singular perspective.

If anyone interested in doing something like this in the marketing/branding space, we would be keen to participate.