Hurricane Katrina

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern Gulf coast of the United States and caused severe destruction. New Orleans, LA was hit particularly hard, and 80% of the city was flooded. Five and a half years later, there are still people living in temporary accommodations. The U.S. government made the decision to rebuild New Orleans, and a study was carried out to decide which parts to abandon and which buildings needed to be elevated.

In a recent news report, the AP reported that 43,000 residential properties are sitting abandoned in New Orleans. Every night 3,000 homeless people squat in these house. Another video, produced by National Geographic, shows the impact of the storm on Southern Mississippi University.

Shel Silverstein's Deserted House

This is the first of two posts on Shel Silverstein. Silverstein wrote books and poems for children that often had adult themes. He performed many of his works publicly while accompanying himself on the guitar. His first big job was working as a cartoonist for Playboy, where he produced the material for his first book of original material, Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, which is hilarious.

"H is for hole. See the hole. The hole is deep. You can bury things in the hole. See the toaster. You can bury the toaster in the hole. See the car keys. You can bury the car keys in the hole. See grandma's teeth. See daddy's shoe. See mommy's diamond ring. Oh-oh - little sister sees you burying things in the hole. Maybe she will snitch on you and you will get a licking. What ELSE can you bury in the hole?"

Or, my personal favorite:

"O is for Oz. Do you want to visit the wonderful far-off land of Oz where the wizard lives and scarecrows can dance and the road is made of yellow bricks and everything is emerald green? Well, you can't because there is no land of Oz and there is no Tin Woodsman and there is NO SANTA CLAUSE! Maybe someday you can go to Detroit."

But that is besides the point. His other most famous books were The Giving Tree, which will be a subject of a later post, and a series of books of children's poetry, including Where the Sidewalk Ends.

In the latter, the following poem appears (p. 56):

ENTER THIS DESERTED HOUSE

But please walk softly as you do.
Frogs dwell here and crickets too.

Ain't no ceiling, only blue
Jays dwell here and sunbeams too.

Floors are flowers-take a few.
Ferns grow here and daisies too.

Whoosh, swoosh-too-whit, too-woo,
Bats dwell here and hoot owls too.

Ha-ha-ha, hee-hee, hoo-hoooo,
Gnomes dwell here and goblins too.

And my child, I thought you knew
I dwell here... and so do you.

Here is a link to the audio of Silverstein reading the poem himself. The poem is accompanied by a black and white ink sketch of a house falling to ruins.

I suppose one could read many things into this poem, and a simple search will turn up all sorts of theories. But in our context, it seems clear that he is expressing the idea of vanitas.

More British Building Ruins, and the Discovery of Rubber Stores

Today we discovered the remains of two previously unidentified British buildings and classified an entirely different type of building, unlike the Stonehenge Sheds.

First of all, we identified the remains of site 32 on the attached map (which shows the Ras el Ein base overlaying the current map of Rosh Ha'ayin). All that remains of this building is a concrete platform with a brick apron around it. On the Ras el Ein map it is labeled S.16, meaning it was formerly a Stonehenge Shed. We do not know when this building was leveled. It is one of two sites that we have found in which only a platform remains. (The other is site 31, or site #95 in Sasson's list).
More excitingly, we identified a British building north of the current city limits of Rosh Ha'ayin, along Highway 5. This confirms our belief that Highway 5 runs along the route of the former Ras el Ein road. This building is in quite poor shape, though it is still being actively used as a garage and seems to have undergone minimal alterations.
What surprised us most about this building was that it did not have the iconic curved profile that the Stonehenge Sheds have. At first we thought this building's roof may have been altered, but upon further consideration we felt it was original. Then it occurred to us - perhaps this building was labeled differently on the Ras el Ein map? Sure enough, instead of having an S.x number, it is labeled R.3. According to the key, this makes it a former Rubber Store, and it makes sense that this building looks different that the others.

Once we had this piece of information, we realized that we had seen another building with a similar design - site 29 on the map. When we rechecked the Ras el Ein map, we noticed that this building was also labeled as a Rubber Store - R.2. (site #93 on Sasson' list). Thus we feel we have convincingly shown that a third type of building existed in Ras el Ein - the Rubber Storage building. It should be noted that there were two other R buildings on the map - R.4 next to R.3, which we did not see and may have been demolished, and another that once stood on Mantzura Street- site 11 on the map, or R.1 on the British Map. We will have to recheck this neighborhood to see if it is still standing.

Yemenite Heritage Center

This afternoon we met briefly with Naftali Simhi, the chairman of the Yemenite Heritage Center in Rosh Haayin. He told us a bit about the history of the museum and the building, and offered to meet with us again in a few weeks to show us some old pictures of the building prior to its renovation.

According to an article in Etrog Magazine from April 2009, the museum was conceived of and founded by Moshe Oved, a local history teacher. In the 1980s he began gathering historical material and oral traditions in the school and established a display which grew in size until it occupied an entire floor. Eventually it was moved to a different location, until in 2006 the museum moved into its present home in a renovated Stonehenge Shed.

In our proposal for our final project, we prepared a plan for a series of satellite museums spread throughout the city that would compliment the Yemenite Heritage House. Although many of these satellites would focus on traditional Yemenite culture, there would also be sites dedicated to other stages in the history of Rosh Ha'ayin. Despite our claims that locals were pushing this agenda, our plan was heavily criticized for being condescending toward the local culture. From one side, we were criticized for Disney-ifying the city, while on the other we were told that this was putting the local culture in a museum, rather than letting it continue on its own.

I want to again emphasize that this is not the case. We look at this less as a museum and more as a living heritage center. In addition, it is very important to understand that this is a plan that locals have long requested, and have long been trying to achieve.

In a 2006 interview with the Jerusalem Post, Simhi is quoted as saying:

"I want visitors to be able to come and be exposed to the folklore. To experience the cooking, the tabun, the malawah, the dance, the Yemenite choir...I want visitors to come and experience four or five hours of Yemenite hospitality, including clothing...I want to turn Rosh Ha'ayin into the center of Yemenite Jewish heritage."

The same article quotes the mayor of city, Moshe Sinai, saying something similar:
"One of the challenges for me as mayor is to preserve the [Yemenite] heritage. They preserved the tradition [in Yemen]. It is my job to protect them, to provide a supportive foundation."

The article in Etrog Magazine quotes local historian Yiska Raveh as saying that:

"The experience of visitors to the place cannot be limited to visiting one building...Rosh Ha'ayin is a community that lives and breaths the Yemenite culture and it in its entirety a historic-ethnic museum."

She also envisions a multi-layered museum with "dress, aromas, song and dance, ethnic workshops" and other branches that tell the local story.

Perhaps most telling is an entry in an Ariel compendium from 1990 which tells of a similar plan, already existing 20 years ago:

"The plan is to establish in Rosh Ha'ayin a center for Yemenite Heritage with workshops alongside the museum: metalworkers, weavers, embroiderers, braiders, etc. The activities will include workshops, song, Yemenite center and also a restaurant for Yemenite cuisine."

Amidar Convenience Store

Between 1950 and 1953, the Israeli government, via the Amidar corporation, built a number of small "public" buildings in Rosh Haayin, including a synagogue, a nursery, and day care center. As we previously posted, these buildings were listed in David Zuslavski's Shikun Olim B'Israel. These buildings, along with the first-generation houses built in Rosh Haayin, represent another stage of Rosh Haayin's development, and their ruins are another layer in the history of Rosh Haayin. It is relatively easy to locate the many houses built during this period, and to note their often-decaying appearance. However, for the most part we do not yet know where the public buildings were located, or of their statuses.

The one exception is the local Convenience Store, or Tzarchania. It is located at John Kennedy 43, and is in a fantastically ruinous state. The skeletal roof is particularly intriguing, as well as crumbling stares and cracked concrete walls. The time schedule on the door, however, is still clear and legible. We do not know how long the building has been abandoned. The buiding is #97 in the Avi Sasson list of

The "Ruin Value" in Nazi Architecture

Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler

Albert Speer (1905-1981) was Adolf Hitler's chief architect. Hitler commissioned him to design multiple structures for him including the New Reich Chancellery in 1939 and the Zeppelinfeld Stadium in Nuremberg where the Nazi party rallies were held from 1933-1938. Today little remains of Speer's architectural works, other than plans, photographs and theory. Speer pioneered the idea of the "Ruin Value", in German, die Ruinenwert. This was the concept that a building should be designed so that if it eventually collapsed it would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins which would look and last best left to fall to ruin on its own. Speer coined the idea in 1936 as Die Ruinenwerttheorie, The Theory of Ruin Value. This idea was supported by Adolf Hitler who planned for such ruins to be a reflection of the greatness of the the Third Reich, just as ancient Greek and Roman ruins reflect their great civilisations. Interestingly, Speer sold the idea to Hitler by drawing a sketch of the Haupttribune, the Nazi Party Rally Grounds as an ivy-covered ruin. As Speer later wrote in his memoirs,

"Ultimately, all that remained to remind men of great epochs of history was their monumental architecture."

Ikea Ruins

New ruins today in Netanya:

The iconic Ikea branch was gutted by fire and left a smoldering ruin. Thankfully, no one was hurt, though all the merchandise went up in smoke. On facebook, a number of my friends posted things like "Where will we shop for furniture now?"

Ikea, which has branches all over the world, has become somewhat of an Israeli institution. I've personally never been there, but I have friends who go there for fun, to hang out. As the first branch that opened in Israel, do the ruins of this building deserve preservation? Probably not. In any case, I have to imagine that they will start rebuilding almost immediately.

Here are some pictures of the building, and for comparison, a mock ruin of a similar type of store, The Best Produces Company Showroom in Houston, from 1975.

A Revelation

Historical Preservation: neither history, nor preservation. Discuss.

Spiro Kostof and the Ruins of Cities

Spiro Kostof was a noted architectural historian and expert on the urban form. I first became acquainted with his work as a student in the University of Michigan, when our textbook for History of Architecture was Kostof's A History of Architecture. However, as a student in Bezalel, where there are a surprising number of classes about urbanism, I also read through his landmark pair of books, The City Shaped and The City Assembled. Spiro died in 1991, while the latter was still being prepared, and his assistant, Greg Castillo, completed the book.

In The City Assembled, the fifth and final chapter, "Urban Process," deals with the role of ruins in the development of cities. This treatment of ruins, in the broader concept of cities, is interesting on a number of levels. During our presentations we have received a number of comments about how it would be interesting if we focused on the life-cycle of buildings. Kostof takes this line, and shows how buildings and their ruins go through phases and contribute to regeneration of cities. This is especially true when huge disasters strike, like the 1666 fire in London or San Francisco in 1906. But in such instances, ruins don't really remain as ruins for long, and the whole city is rebuilt en masse. A future post will be dedicated to the ruins of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

One interesting test case that Kostof discusses is World War II. He writes:

"Of all the dozens of cities devastated by the Second World War, almost all chose to rebuild. It was rumored that Polish leaders considered relocating Warsaw, and the Soviets debated moving Stalingrad. St.-Malo gave some thought to leaving its rubble as a war memorial, and rebuilding farther south on the mainland. But practical reasons and local national symbolism won out in the end."(Kostof, p. 251)

Cassino in Italy was moved after 1945, and its ruins were declared a national monument, though Kostof notes that the remains were so thoroughly leveled by bombs that they are hardly recognizable. At one point, in the 4th c. BCE, even Rome considered relocating to Veii, partially because its ruins were considered "polluted."

Perhaps the most interesting section is where Kostof deals with Damnatio Memoriae, when a structure is destroyed as an attempt to erase or curse the memory of a previous regime. Usually these sits are either redeveloped in a manner that emphasizes the new order, or the existing building is given a new use. There are a number of famous buildings constructed on the ruins of previous structures that were destroyed for this reason. Most famously, the Colosseum in Rome is building on the site of Nero's Golden House. Kostof does not, however, list a third option - leaving the site as a ruin indefinitely. (p. 254)

Kostof also points out that in war, it is often prohibitively difficult to completely destroy a city and leave it razed to the ground. Even when histories describe cities as being completely destroyed, there are often ruins remaining, which can then be redeveloped or rebuilt. This is almost always true, with a few exceptions: Carthage in 146 BCE (which, even then, was rebuilt a century later by Julius Caesar), the Czech village of Lidice, and various cities conquered by the Mongols. The Nazis attempted to do this to Warsaw, with partial success.

Kostof discusses archaeological strata, when remains from various layers exist underground. (p.250) This is an interesting model for ruins, and from a historical point of view, it does a good job at preserving sites in a stable climate for future historical study. However, it has two main shortcomings - the site is not visible, and thus does not accomplish what is presumably one of the main goals of historical preservation, and it does not preserve buildings as living sites with day-to-day functions. This begins to touch on bigger issues with Historical Preservation, a movement which is basically not interested in either history or preservation.

Nolli, Roman Ruins, and Ruin Redevelopment

One of the most iconic maps is the one of Rome produced by Giambattista Nolli in 1748. There are many amazing things about this figure-ground depiction of the Eternal City, such as the minute detail with which he rendered the interior of public buildings. Nolli also numbered each building, a total of 1320 sites. Of these sites, he lists 60 of them as being in ruins. Truth be told, however, a large portion of the ancient footprint of Rome had become depopulated over the centuries and lay in ruins. This area, the disabitato, was becoming resettled in Nolli's time and contained villas, gardens and agriculture.

In built-up urban areas, ruins have long provided an extra open space, or provided the opportunity for redevelopment. This process continues today. In previous posts we have shown artistic depictions of ruins reuse, for industry and other activities. I can also think of instances in which ruins were cleared and the space redeveloped, though this is less interesting to me because of it's lack of concern for historical preservation. We see in the Nolli map some reuse of Roman ruins for new activities, but also some ruins which have since been cleared.

Anfiteatro Castrense (no. 20 on the Nolli map) is now a garden. The ruins of the villa di Mecenata (no. 39) were destroyed in 1877 for the new Via Carlo Alberto. The Arco di Tito (no. 73) was restored in 1821, while the Coserve d'acqua delle Terme Diocleziane (no. 200) was destroyed. Castro Pretorio (no. 202) is now part of the national library. Maus. di Augusto (no. 472) was restored in the 1930 with a heavy hand, wiping out some of the surrounding buildings. Remains of the Ponte Trionfale (no. 541), a bridge over the Tiber, is still visible when the water level is low. The Terme di Trajan Decio ruins (no. 1079) have been covered by 20th century housing.

An interesting study would be to survey those buildings listed as ruins by Nolli, and to compare the restored, reused, and destroyed buildings with the ones that were left alone.

All this is relevant to the previous post about Canopy Gap. Just the death of a tree provides opportunity for new growth, so too a ruin can provide either space for a new structure, or simply for a new activity within the ruins.