A while ago Jason Kottke spent an article on the mysterious Project Cybersyn, which is described as a “a Chilean attempt at real-time computer-controlled planned economy in the years 1970–1973″. Project Cybersyn existed during the government of president Salvador Allende and consisted of a network of telex machines that linked factories with a single computer center in Santiago. From here the principles of cybernetics were used to control the modes of production in real-time, or, as The Guardian describes it:

“Voters, workplaces and the government were to be linked together by a new, interactive national communications network, which would transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before — a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time.”

The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer, who was asked by Allende to design it. It took about one year to launch a first version of Project Cybersyn, but Beer, who is also known for his Viable System Model, never managed to entirely complete it. The Cybersyn control center (see picture above) received its stream of data from 500 telex machines that were put in 500 factories throughout the country. Each piece of data, such as numbers about raw material input, production output and the number of absentees, was put into a computer which was able to make short-term predictions and necessary adjustments.

“There were four levels of control (firm, branch, sector, total), with algedonic feedback (if lower level of control didn’t remedy a problem in a certain interval, the higher level was notified). The results were discussed in the operations room and the top-level plan was made.”

Worth mentioning is the futuristic design of the control room, as you can notice in the picture above. It was designed by interface designer Gui Bonsiepe and furnished with “seven swivel chairs (considered the best for creativity) with buttons, which controlled several large screens that could project the data, and other panels with status information”. The system proved to be most useful in October 1972, when thousands of striking truck drivers blocked the access streets to the Chilean capital. Using the Cybersyn machines, the authorities could guarantee transport of food into the city “with only about 200 trucks driven by strike-breakers”. After Pinochet’s military coup on September 11, 1973, the control centre was destroyed.

It is out of our hands and soon into yours: Volume’s special issue Al Manakh Gulf Cont’d — 536 pages on the Gulf region from 139 contributors based in over 20 countries will be launched in just under a month, on April 18, both in the Gulf and beyond. Over a year of researching, questioning, commentating, and evaluating topics that have evolved from the Gulf have been collated into this edition, limited only by the size of your postbox.

For many of us, there is no finality in a topic that is eternally evolving, and as the title indicates, continuing. It would be very easy to wipe our hands clean, claim its completeness and move on. But with the excitement of the process and its result still fresh in our memory, we still look for ways to continue the dialogue this journey incited.

The project of Al Manakh collects narratives over the year. And with a year of research comes a year of data. The intention now is to engage an alternative vantage into the making of Al Manakh.

What we present is a series of visualizations – a quantitative appendix to supplement the qualitative publication – in hope that from looking back, and the reader looking forward, we can enhance the conclusions that represent this schism in time of a continuing Gulf. The forthcoming blog series focuses on the sources, content and relationships that develop through its making: From Process to Production.

Visualization 1: A Year of Research
A cross-section of the editorial research team: topics, activities, networks, and biases.

Visualization 2/3: Sources to Subjects
Illustrating where the source and type of information came from to what becomes of it in the print outcome. This prompts questions such as: if 48% of sources are from business news agencies, yet 61% of our content was written by cultural professionals, does Al Manakh what sort of commentary does the project make?

Visualization 4: Looking Back and Forward
What this analysis means to Al Manakh: Gulf Continued and how it may influence future publications.

Royal Haskoning, the Delta Alliance and the City of Rotterdam invite students from all over the world to enter the third edition of the DeltaCompetition and develop practical, innovative, sustainable solutions to the threats facing delta cities. The organization is looking for new, inspiring and daring ideas and practical solutions from a wide combination of disciplines that integrate urban development and flood risk reduction, fresh water provision and energy production, housing and sustainable infrastructure development, (water) transport and rainwater catchment, and/or smart tools to improve urban development policy, implementation and enforcement and water governance in delta cities.

The best three will receive an award with a prize of € 3,000 each. Furthermore, the three winning participants are invited to present their ideas to an international audience of decision makers and experts during the Deltas in Times of Climate Change symposium, to be held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, from 28 September to 1 October 2010.

—Postcard of the ‘Executive Park Motor Hotel’ in Atlanta

Mockitecture features a small series of American ‘postcards from the future’. The cards are nearly fifty years old and unravel some nostalgic elements of modernism. Especially the text on the backside of the postcard of the ‘Equitable Life Assurance Society Pavilion’ for New York World’s Fair speaks volumes about the urbanist’s fascinations for showcasing data in the public domain as can be still found today.

“The Equitable Pavilion, a contemporary open strecture located on the Pool of Inndustry, houses the famous Equitable Demograph, a 45-foot electronically controlled map of the United States. See for yourself America’s growing population brought to life right before your eyes!”

Yesterday a new remarkable hotel opened doors in the Dutch city of Zaandam. The building embodies anew chapter in modern architecture making a solid design statement: modern design does not necessarily have to look modern and traditional design does not have to look traditional. We would call it neo-neo-traditionalism.

The new Inntel hotel is already the main eye-stopper in the revamped town centre and a building that has set many tongues wagging in the Netherlands. The iconic green wooden houses of the Zaan region were the fount of inspiration for the hotel’s designer, Wilfried van Winden (WAM Architecten, Delft). The structure is a lively stacking of various examples of these traditional houses, ranging from a notary’s residence to a worker’s cottage.

Wilfried van Winden envisages the hotel as a temporary home, alluding to that transience with the stack of houses. Visually speaking the structure is built up from a varied stacking of almost seventy individual little houses, executed in four shades of the traditional green of the Zaan region. The hotel is unique, familiar yet original and idiosyncratic. It is a design that could be realized only in Zaandam but at the same time transcends and reinvigorates local tradition. Interesting is  the fun element in the design. It makes one think and wonder. It adapts to traditional regional style elements while ridiculizing it at the same time.

—On Thursday March 25, the Netherlands Architecture Institute will be hosting a debate on the role of traditionalism in current architecture practice. Volume Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman is one of the seven debaters. More information here (in Dutch).

Why not map the contemporary search for gold in the United States? Using a U.S. Department of Interior database, Gold Maps Online has created a series of KML files to help highlight areas where gold is currently being found. The maps can be imported in Google Earth and provide an almost real-time look at America’s active gold deposits.

“It’s near real-time because gold mining claim holders are required to pay annual fees to maintain ownership. They wouldn’t do that if they weren’t finding gold on the property. This is a map of where prospectors are finding gold in 2010.”

Described as a “must-have planning and exploration tool for any gold panning adventure” the maps of 2010 contain 378,890 active gold claims and 181,134 abandoned gold claims. All claims are located on public lands spread across twelve western states. Maps of abandoned claims reveal activity from 1986 through 2010.

Unfortunately the gold maps are not available for free, but hey, the trips offered by the California Steam Ship were not either. Nevertheless, it is possible to download a free sample map to see what it looks like.

13 March 2010, Trouw/De Verdieping, Amsterdam.
More information here.

Nature has always been complete, and yet it is never finished. Technology can expand nature infinitely, but should learn to play by some of the same rules. At the Transnatural symposium acknowledged designers, scientists, artists and architects explore the philosophical, cultural and practical implications of the fusion between technology and nature.

Last Saturday, the Studio Beirut collective launched Beyroutes in the city that it honours: Beirut. With many of the contributors packed into the tiny Papercup Bookstore, it became a happy, emotional, and shamelessly self-boosting affair.

From an upper shelve of a book cabinet, Chris Fruneaux speeched about the deep friendships that underlie the making of the book. In a talk with the Royal Netherlands Embassy’s Cultural Attache, Joost Janmaat revealed some of the inner workings of the beast we refer to as Studio Beirut. In a far corner, Rani al Rajji could be found recruiting stunningly beautiful girls into the ranks of the Bounyaks. Joe Mounzer got into a signing frenzy of his own; brazenly scribbling away at every blank spot of paper that got near. And all along, Steve Eid and Pascale Hares were standing on the pavement outside Papercup, between them the intimidatingly pretty latest addition to the squad: baby Noa.

Hardcore locals, engaged tourists and nostalgic diaspora: this guide was made by a broad array of committed amateurs that project themselves onto the city. For years, they have looked to this particular city to accommodate their dreams, ambitions, curiosities and insecurities.

The result was a book about Beirut disguised as a guide. For a guide, it is a pretty lousy one. it does not have much listings of great bars and fancy restaurants. it does not give you splattering colourful accounts of the luxurious places to sleep, nor the latest haunts to dance the night away. It does, however, give you personal, subjective, intimate, and contested accounts ways to look at, experience, understand or even judge the city. Thus, you can navigate the city with Joe’s assassination tour, dig into Ashrafieh with Tony Chakar’s statements on Catastrophic Space, step into the head of artist Jan Rothuizen, who drew the annotated maps or written drawings that illustrate the cover.

Beyroutes is a guide about Beirut that could be of use in any city. They say all people are unique; the cities they live in are surprisingly similar. In every city, for example, the cheap and trashy hostels can be found just around the corner from the train or bus terminal. In every city, next to the official monuments of the state you will find the accidental monuments of the people. Thus, rather than propose a re-enactment or simulation of a particular city, in Beyroutes we propose four lenses, or looking glasses to look at the city (or any city). We give you the first impression city, the official city, the accidental city, and the emotional city. In Beyroutes, these ways of looking have lead to Zinab Chahine’s survival guide to Dahiyeh, and the ultimate pieces on the infrastructure of intimacy by Maureen abu Ghanem (on the etiquette of commercial sex) and Joane Chaker (on teenage love).

—Written by Joost Janmaat
—More: partizanpublik.nl

Scientists of MIT’s Bits and Atoms Lab are helping people in the city of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to turn pieces of board, wire, a plastic tub and some cans into reflectors for a wireless network named Fab Fi. The team has put up 25 nodes in the city, with locals now having access to a stable internet connection. With a little training, they even figured out to how to expand the network by copying reflectors and making new links.

“You can’t always get nice plywood and wire mesh and acrylic and Shop Bot time when you want to make a link. Maybe it’s the middle of the night and the lab is closed. Maybe you spent all your money on a router and all you have left for a reflector is the junk in your back yard. That, dear world, is when you improvise.”

MIT is also shipping routers to Jalalabad to enable the city to further improve its network.

The Fab Fi project is very interesting, especially since it proves the relevance to rethink foreign aid in terms of injecting knowledge and expertise to accelerate local progress instead of an injection of externally-managed aid money.

“An 18-month World Bank funded infrastructure project to bring internet connectivity to Afghanistan began more than seven years ago and only made its first international link this June. That project, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, is still far from being complete while FabLabbers are building useful infrastructure for pennies on the dollar out of their garbage.”

Sketches for future cities and utopian buildings are often circular-shaped. Apparently a huge group of futurists, architects and urbanists prefers society to be rounded-up and dome-like. It’s hard to find out why, but one of the main reasons might be that the future city in essence has to stay away from current urban forms. A utopian sketch containing family houses in a row would be pretty boring and not really interesting as a futuristic vision. Here’s a way to create your own circular utopian future city in 3D. The ForCG website hosts a great tutorial explaining step by step how to make a utopian dream into a pretty render while using Autodesk’s 3DS Max. Here’s part 1 and part 2 of the tutorial.