Tropic of Charlie
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- Christopher Alexander
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Drawings of a Wave Pool Urbanism
I spent a week drawing five different views of urban compositions incorporating wave pools. I’m reflecting on what Rem Koolhaus says in the book, Delirious New York, where he posits that the New York City of the first half of the twentieth century was, “ a factory of Man-made experience, where the real and the natural cease to exist.”1 I think this natural-artificial dischotomy has really destroyed our cities, and that our hesitation to lean into producing an urbanism for the whole spectrum of human experience has led to a reality of perpetual compromise (i.e. I’m in the country, why can’t I find a good restaurant or walk anywhere? or alternatively I’m in the city why can’t I walk around and explore nature?). I hope work in this vein doesn’t stay/become so literal, but we have to do away with these notions that certain things are for cities and certain other things are low-rise suburban sprawl. What if facets of human existence begin to better insinuate?